ZZZD 


HENRY  SYDNOR. 
HARRISON 


TU 
101 


QUEED 


(p.  l.VJ) 


MR.  QUEED,   YOU  ARE   AFFLICTED   WITH   A 
FATAL  MALADY.   YOUR  COSMOS  IS  ALL  EGO. 


QUEED 

A  NOVEL 

BY 

HENRY   SYDNOR   HARRISON 


WITH  A  FRONTISPIECE  BY 
R.  M.  CROSBY 


BOSTON   AND   NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


1911 


COPYRIGHT,    IQI I,    BY   HENRY   SYDNOR    HARRISON 


ALL    RIGHTS   RESERVED 


Published  May  IQII 


TO  MY  MOTHER 


I  "  ' 

.jLv 


CONTENTS 

i 

First  Meeting  between  a  Citizen  in  Spectacles  and  the  Great 
Pleasure-Dog  Behemoth;  also  of  Charles  Gardiner  West,  a 
Personage  at  Thirty  3 

II 

Mrs.  Paynter's  Boarding-House:  which  was  not  founded  as  an 
Eleemosynary  Institution 14 

III 

Encounter  between  Charlotte  Lee  Weyland,  a  Landlady's  Agent, 
and  Doctor  Queed,  a  Young  Man  who  would  n't  pay  his 
Board 25 

IV 

Relating  how  Two  Stars  in  their  Courses  fought  for  Mr.  Queed; 
and  how  he  accepted  Remunerative  Employment  under  Colonel 
Cowles,  the  Military  Political  Economist 40 


Selections  from  Contemporary  Opinions  of  Mr.  Queed;  also  con 
cerning  Henry  G.  Surface,  his  Life  and  Deeds;  of  Fifi,  the 
Landlady's  Daughter,  and  how  she  happened  to  look  up  Al 
truism  in  the  Dictionary 51 

VI 

Autobiographical  Data  imparted,  for  Sound  Business  Reasons, 
to  a  Landlady' s  Agent;  of  the  Agent' s  Other  Title,  etc.  ...  64 

VII 

In  which  an  Assistant  Editor,  experiencing  the  Common  Desire 
to  thrash  a  Proof-Reader,  makes  a  Humiliating  Discovery; 
and  of  how  Trainer  Klinker  gets  a  Pupil  the  Same  Evening  .  79 

VIII 

Formal  Invitation  to  Fiji  to  share  Queed's  Dining-Room  (pro 
vided  it  is  very  cold  upstairs);  and  First  Outrage  upon  the 
Sacred  Schedule  of  Hours 93 


viii  CONTENTS 

IX 

Of  Charles  Gardiner  West,  President-Elect  of  Blaines  College, 
and  his  Ladies  Fair:  all  in  Mr.  West's  Lighter  Manner.  .  .104 

X 

Of  Fifi  on  Friendship,  and  who  would  be  sorry  if  Queed  died; 
of  Queed 's  Mad  Impulse,  sternly  overcome;  of  his  Indignant 
Call  upon  Nicolovius,  the  Old  Professor 114 

XI 

Concerning  a  Plan  to  make  a  Small  Gift  to  a  Fellow-Boarder, 
and  what  it  led  to  in  the  Way  of  Calls;  also  touching  upon 
Mr.  Queed's  Dismissal  from  the  Post,  and  the  Generous  Re 
solve  of  the  Young  Lady,  Charles  Weyland 127 

XII 

More  Consequences  of  the  Plan  about  the  Gift,  and  of  how  Mr. 
Queed  drinks  his  Medicine  like  a  Man;  Fifi  on  Men,  and 
how  they  do;  Second  Corruption  of  the  Sacred  Schedule  .  .137 

XIII 

"Taking  the  Little  Doctor  Down  a  Peg  or  Two":  as  performed 
for  the  First  and  Only  Time  by  Sharlee  Weyland  .  .  .  .146 

XIV 

In  which  Klinker  quotes  Scripture,  and  Queed  has  helped  Fifi 
with  her  Lessons  for  the  Last  Time 163 

XV 

In  a  Country  Churchyard,  and  afterwards;  of  Friends:  how  they 
take  your  Time  while  they  live,  and  then  die,  upsetting  your 
Evening's  Work;  and  what  Buck  Klinker  saw  in  the  Scripto 
rium  at  2  a.  m 174 

XVI 

Triumphal  Return  of  Charles  Gardiner  West  from  the  Old  World; 
and  of  how  the  Other  World  had  wagged  in  his  Absence  .  .  .  1 86 

XVII 

A  Remeeting  in  a  Cemetery:  the  Unglassed  Queed  who  loafed  on 
Rustic  Bridges;  of  the  Consequences  of  failing  to  tell  a  Lady 
that  you  hope  to  see  her  again  soon 200 


CONTENTS  ix 

XVIII 

Of  President  West  of  Old  Blaines  College,  his  Trustees  and  his 
Troubles;  his  Firmness  in  the  Brown-Jones  Hazing  Incident 
so  misconstrued  by  Malicious  Asses;  his  Article  for  the  Post, 
and  why  it  was  never  printed:  all  ending  in  West's  Profound 
Dissatisfaction  with  the  Rewards  of  Patriotism 216 

XIX 

The  Little  House  on  Duke  of  Gloucester  Street;  and  the  Beginning 
of  Various  Feelings,  Sensibilities,  and  Attitudes  between  two 
Lonely  Men 239 

XX 

Meeting  of  the  Post  Directors  to  elect  a  Successor  to  Colonel  Cowles; 
Charles  Gardiner  West's  Sensible  Remarks  on  Mr.  Queed;  Mr. 
West's  Resignation  from  Old  Blaines  College,  and  New  Con 
secration  to  the  Uplift 248 

XXI 

Queed  sits  on  the  Steps  with  Sharlee,  and  sees  Some  Old  Soldiers  go 
marching  by 257 

XXII 

In  which  Professor  Nicolovius  drops  a  Letter  on  the  Floor,  and 
Queed  conjectures  that  Happiness  sometimes  comes  to  Men 
wearing  a  Strange  Face  274 

XXIII 

Of  the  Bill  for  the  Reformatory,  and  its  Critical  Situation;  of 
West's  Second  Disappointment  with  the  Rewards  of  Patriot 
ism;  of  the  Consolation  he  found  in  the  Most  Charming  Re 
solve  in  the  World 290 

XXIV 

Sharlee' s  Parlor  on  Another  Evening;  how  One  Caller  outsat  Two, 
and  why;  also,  how  Sharlee  looked  in  her  Mirror  for  a  Long 
Time,  and  why 300 

XXV 

Recording  a  Discussion  about  the  Reformatory  between  Editor 
West  and  his  Dog-like  Admirer,  the  City  Boss;  and  a  Briefer 
Conversation  between  West  and  Prof.  Nicolovius' s  Boarder  .  312 


x  CONTENTS 

XXVI 

In  which  Queed  forces  the  Old  Professor's  Hand,  and  the  Old  Pro 
fessor  takes  to  his  Bed 330 

XXVII 

Sharlee  Weyland  reads  the  Morning  Post;  of  Rev.  Mr.  Dayne's 
Fight  at  Ephesus  and  the  Telephone  Message  that  never  came; 
of  the  Editor's  Comment  upon  the  Assistant  Editor's  Resigna 
tion,  which  perhaps  lacked  Clarity;  and  of  how  Eight  Men 
elect  a  Mayor 345 

XXVIII 

How  Words  can  be  like  Blows,  and  Blue  Eyes  stab  deep;  how 
Queed  sits  by  a  Bedside  and  reviews  his  Life;  and  how  a 
Thought  leaps  at  him  and  will  not  down 363 

XXIX 

In  which  Queed' s  Shoulders  can  bear  One  Man's  Roguery  and 
Another's  Dishonor,  and  of  what  these  Fardels  cost  him:  how 
for  the  Second  Time  in  his  Life  he  stays  out  of  Bed  to  think  .  .  375 

xxx 

Death  of  the  Old  Professor,  and  how  Queed  finds  that  his  List  of 
Friends  has  grown;  a  Last  Will  and  Testament;  Exchange  of 
Letters  among  Prominent  Attorneys,  which  unhappily  proves 
futile 387 

XXXI 

God  moves  in  a  Mysterious  Way :  how  the  finished  Miss  Avery 
appears  as  the  Instrument  of  Providence  ;  how  Sharlee  sees 
her  Idol  of  Many  Years  go  toppling  in  the  Dust,  and  how  it  is 
her  Turn  to  meditate  in  the  Still  Watches 397 

XXXII 

Second  Meeting  between  a  Citizen  and  the  Great  Pleasure-Dog 
Behemoth,  involving  Plans  for  Two  New  Homes 416 


QUEED 


QUEED 


I 

First  Meeting  between  a  Citizen  in  Spectacles  and  the  Great 
Pleasure-Dog  Behemoth ;  also  of  Charles  Gardiner  West,  a 
Personage  at  Thirty. 

IT  was  five  of  a  November  afternoon,  crisp  and  sharp, 
and  already  running  into  dusk.    Down  the  street  came 
a  girl  and  a  dog,  rather  a  small  girl  and  quite  a  behe- 
mothian  dog.  If  she  had  been  a  shade  smaller,  or  he  a  shade 
more  behemothian,  the  thing  would  have  approached  a 
parody  on  one's  settled  idea  of  a  girl  and  a  dog.   She  had 
enough  height  to  save  that,  but  it  was  the  narrowest  sort 
of  squeak. 

The  dog  was  of  the  breed  which  are  said  to  come  trotting 
into  Alpine  monasteries  of  a  winter's  night  with  fat  Ameri 
can  travelers  in  their  mouths,  frozen  stiff.  He  was  extremely 
large  for  his  age,  whatever  that  was.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  girl  was  small  for  her  age,  which  was  twenty-four  next 
month;  not  so  much  short,  you  understand,  for  she  was  of 
a  reasonable  height,  as  of  a  dainty  slimness,  a  certain  ex 
quisite  reticence  of  the  flesh.  She  had  cares  and  duties  and 
even  sober-sided  responsibilities  in  this  world,  beyond  the 
usual  run  of  girls.  Yet  her  hat  was  decidedly  of  the  mode 
that  year ;  her  suit  was  smartly  and  engagingly  cut ;  her  furs 
were  glossy  and  black  and  big.  Her  face,  it  may  be  said 
here  as  well  as  later,  had  in  its  time  given  pleasure  to  the 
male  sex,  and  some  food  for  critical  conversation  to  the 
female.  A  good  many  of  the  young  men  whom  she  met 
along  the  way  this  afternoon  appeared  distinctly  pleased 
to  speak  to  her. 


QUEED 

The  girl  was  Sharlee  Weyland,  and  Sharlee  was  the  short 
for  Charlotte  Lee,  as  invented  by  herself  some  score  of  years 
before.  One  baby-name  in  a  hundred  sticks  through  a  life 
time,  and  hers  was  the  one  in  that  particular  hundred.  Of 
the  young  men  along  the  way,  one  was  so  lucky  as  to  catch 
her  eye  through  a  large  plate-glass  window.  It  was  Semple 
and  West's  window,  the  ground-floor  one  in  the  great  new 
Commonwealth  Building,  of  which  the  town  is  rightly  so 
proud,  and  the  young  man  was  no  other  than  West,  Charles 
Gardiner  himself.  A  smile  warmed  his  good-looking  face 
when  he  met  the  eye  of  the  girl  and  the  dog ;  he  waved  a  hand 
at  them.  That  done,  he  immediately  vanished  from  the 
window  and  reached  for  his  hat  and  coat;  gave  hurried 
directions  to  a  clerk  and  a  stenographer ;  and  sallying  forth, 
overtook  the  pair  before  they  had  reached  the  next  corner. 

"Everything's  topsy-turvy,"  said  he,  coming  alongside. 
"Here  you  are  frivolously  walking  downtown  with  a  dog. 
Usually  at  this  time  you  are  most  earnestly  walking  up 
town,  and  not  a  sign  of  a  dog  as  far  as  the  eye  can  see.  What 
on  earth's  happened?" 

"Oh,  how  do  you  do?"  said  she,  apparently  not  displeased 
to  find  herself  thus  surprised  from  the  rear.  "I  too  have  a 
mad  kind  of  feeling,  as  though  the  world  had  gone  upside 
down.  Don't  be  amazed  if  I  suddenly  clutch  out  at  you 
to  keep  from  falling.  But  the  name  of  it  —  of  this  feeling 
—  is  having  a  holiday.  Mr.  Dayne  went  to  New  York  at 

12.20." 

"Ah,  I  see.  When  the  cat's  away?" 

"Not  at  all.  I  am  taking  this  richly  earned  vacation  by 
his  express  command." 

"In  that  case,  why  mightn't  we  turn  about  and  go  a 
real  walk —  cease  picking  our  way  through  the  noisome  hum 
of  commerce  and  set  brisk  evening  faces  toward  the  open 
road  —  and  all  that?  You  and  I  and  the  dog.  What  is  his 
name?  Rollo,  I  suppose?" 

"Rollo!  No!  Or  Tray  or  Fido,  either!  His  name  is  Bee, 
short  for  Behemoth  —  and  I  think  that  a  very  captivating 


QUEED  5 

little  name,  don't  you?  His'old  name,  the  one  I  bought  him 
by,  was  Fred  —  Fred  /  —  but  already  he  answers  to  the 
pretty  name  of  Bee  as  though  he  were  born  to  it.  Watch." 
She  pursed  her  lips  and  gave  a  whistle,  unexpectedly  loud 
and  clear.  "Here,  Bee,  here!  Here,  sir!  Look,  look.  He 
turned  around  right  away!1' 

West  laughed.  "Wonderfully  gifted  dog.  But  I  believe 
you  mentioned  taking  a  walk  in  the  November  air.  I  can 
only  say  that  physicians  strongly  recommend  it,  valetudi 
narians  swear  by  it — " 

"Oh  —  if  I  only  could!  —  but  I  simply  cannot  think  of 
it.  Do  you  know,  I  never  have  a  holiday  without  wondering 
how  on  earth  I  could  have  gotten  on  another  day  without 
it.  You  can't  imagine  what  loads  of  things  I  Ve  done  since 
two  o'clock,  and  loads  remain.  The  very  worst  job  of  them 
all  still  hangs  by  a  hair  over  my  head.  I  must  cross  here." 

West  said  that  evidently  her  conception  of  a  holiday  was 
badly  mixed.  As  they  walked  he  paid  for  her  society  by 
incessantly  taking  off  his  hat;  nearly  everybody  they  met 
spoke  to  them,  many  more  to  him  than  to.  her.  Though 
both  of  them  had  been  born  in  that  city  and  grown  up  with 
it,  the  girl  had  only  lately  come  to  know  West  well,  and  she 
did  not  know  him  very  well  now.  All  the  years  hitherto  she 
had  joined  in  the  general  admiration  of  him  shyly  and  from 
a  distance,  the  pretty  waiting-lady's  attitude  toward  the 
dazzling  young  crown  prince.  She  was  observant,  and  so 
she  could  not  fail  to  observe  now  the  cordiality  with  which 
people  of  all  sorts  saluted  him,  the  touch  of  deference  in  the 
greeting  of  not  a  few.  He  was  scarcely  thirty,  but  it  would 
have  been  clear  to  a  duller  eye  that  he  was  already  some 
thing  of  a  personage.  Yet  he  held  no  public  office,  nor  were 
his  daily  walks  the  walks  of  philanthropic  labor  for  the  com 
mon  good.  In  fact  Semple  &  West's  was  merely  a  brokerage 
establishment,  which  was  understood  to  be  cleaning  up  a 
tolerable  lot  of  money  per  annum. 

They  stood  on  the  corner,  waiting  for  a  convenient  chance 
to  cross,  and  West  looked  at  her  as  at  one  whom  it  was 


6  QUEED 

pleasant  to  rest  one's  eyes  upon.  She  drew  his  attention 
to  their  humming  environment.  For  a  city  of  that  size 
the  life  and  bustle  here  were,  indeed,  such  as  to  take  the 
eye.  Trolley  cars  clanged  by  in  a  tireless  procession;  trucks 
were  rounding  up  for  stable  and  for  bed ;  delivery  wagons 
whizzed  corners  and  bumped  on  among  them;  now  and 
then  a  chauffeur  honked  by,  grim  eyes  roving  for  the  un 
wary  pedestrian.  On  both  sides  of  the  street  the  homeward 
march  of  tired  humans  was  already  forming  and  quick 
ening. 

" Heigho!  We're  living  in  an  interesting  time,  you  and  I," 
said  West.  "It  isn't  every  generation  that  can  watch  its 
old  town  change  into  a  metropolis  right  under  its  eyes." 

"I  remember,"  said  she,  "when  it  was  an  exciting  thing 
to  see  anybody  on  the  street  you  did  n't  know.  You  went 
home  and  told  the  family  about  it,  and  very  likely  counted 
the  spoons  next  morning.  The  city  seemed  to  belong  to  us 
then.  And  now  —  look.  Everywhere  new  kings  that  know 
not  Joseph.  Bee!" 

"  It's  the  law  of  life;  the  old  order  changeth."  He  turned 
and  looked  along  the  street,  into  the  many  faces  of  the  home 
ward  bound.  "The  eternal  mystery  of  the  people.  .  .  . 
Don't  you  like  to  look  at  their  faces  and  wonder  what  they  're 
all  doing  and  thinking  and  hoping  and  dreaming  to  make 
out  of  their  lives?" 

"Don't  you  think  they're  all  hoping  and  dreaming  just 
one  thing?  —  how  to  make  more  money  than  they're  mak 
ing  at  present?  All  over  the  world,"  said  Miss  Weyland, 
"bright  young  men  lie  awake  at  night,  thinking  up  odd, 
ingenious  ways  to  take  other  people's  money  away  from 
them.  These  young  men  are  the  spirit  of  America.  We're 
having  an  irruption  of  them  here  now  .  .  .  the  Goths  sack 
ing  the  sacred  city." 

"Clever  rascals  they  are  too.  I,"  said  West,  "belong  to 
the  other  group.  I  sleep  of  nights  and  wake  up  in  the  morn 
ing  to  have  your  bright  young  Goths  take  my  money 
away  from  me." 


QUEED  7 

He  laughed  and  continued:  "Little  Bobby  Smythe,  who 
used  to  live  here,  was  in  my  office  the  other  day.  I  was 
complimenting  him  on  the  prosperity  of  the  plumbers' 
supply  manufacture  —  for  such  is  his  mundane  occupation, 
in  Schenectady,  N.  Y.  Bobby  said  that  plumbers'  supplies 
were  all  well  enough,  but  he  made  his  real  money  from  an 
interesting  device  of  his  own.  There  is  a  lot  of  building 
going  on  in  his  neighborhood,  it  seems,  and  it  occurred  to 
him  to  send  around  to  the  various  owners  and  offer  his  pri 
vate  watchman  to  guard  the  loose  building  materials  at 
night.  This  for  the  very  reasonable  price  of  $3.50  a  week. 
It  went  like  hot  cakes.  '  But,'  said  I,  '  surely  your  one  watch 
man  can't  look  after  thirty-seven  different  places.'  'No,' 
said  Bobby,  'but  they  think  he  does.'  I  laughed  and  com 
mended  his  ingenuity.  'But  the  best  part  of  the  joke,' 
said  he,  'is  that  /  have  n't  got  any  watchman  at  all.'" 

Sharlee  Weyland  laughed  gayly.  "Bobby  could  stand  for 
the  portrait  of  young  America." 

"You've  been  sitting  at  the  feet  of  a  staunch  old  Tory 
Gamaliel  named  Colonel  Cowles.  I  can  see  that.  Ah,  me! 
My  garrulity  has  cost  us  a  splendid  chance  to  cross..  What 
are  all  these  dreadful  things  you  have  still  left  to  do  on  your 
so-called  holiday?" 

"Well,"  said  she,  "first  I'm  going  to  Saltman's  to  buy 
stationery.  Boxes  and  boxes  of  it,  for  the  Department. 
Bee!  Come  here,  sir!  Look  how  fat  this  purse  is.  I  'm  going 
to  spend  all  of  that.  Bee!  I  wish  I  had  put  him  to  leash. 
He's  going  to  hurt  himself  in  a  minute  —  you  see!  — " 

"Don't  you  think  he's  much  more  likely  to  hurt  some 
body  else?  For  a  guess,  that  queer-looking  little  citizen  in 
spectacles  over  the  way,  who  so  evidently  does  n't  know 
where  he  is  at." 

"Oh,  do  you  think  so?  —  Bee!  .  .  .  Then,  after  station 
ery,  comes  the  disagreeable  thing,  and  yet  interesting  too. 
I  have  to  go  to  my  Aunt  Jennie's,  dunning." 

"You  are  compelled  to  dun  your  Aunt  Jennie?" 

She  laughed.     "No-— dun  for  her,   because  she's  too 


8  QUEED 

tender-hearted  to  do  it  herself.  There's  a  man  there  who 
won't  pay  his  board.  Bee!  Bee!  —  BEE!  —  O  heavens  — 
It's  happened!" 

And,  too  quick  for  West,  she  was  gone  into  the  melee,  which 
immediately  closed  in  behind  her,  barricading  him  away. 

What  had  happened  was  a  small  tragedy  in  its  way. 
The  little  citizen  in  spectacles,  who  had  been  standing 
on  the  opposite  corner  vacantly  eating  an  apple  out  of  a 
paper  bag,  had  unwisely  chosen  his  moment  to  try  the  cross 
ing.  He  was  evidently  an  indoors  sort  of  man  and  no  shakes 
at  crossing  streets,  owing  to  the  introspective  nature  of  his 
mind.  A  grocery  wagon  shaved  him  by  an  inch.  It  was  doing 
things  to  the  speed-limit,  this  wagon,  because  a  dashing 
police  patrol  was  close  behind,  treading  on  its  tail  and  in 
dignantly  clanging  it  to  turn  out,  which  it  could  not  pos 
sibly  do.  To  avoid  erasing  the  little  citizen,  the  patrol  man 
had  to  pull  sharply  out;  and  this  manoeuvre,  as  Fate  had 
written  it,  brought  him  full  upon  the  great  dog  Behemoth, 
who,  having  slipped  across  the  tracks,  stood  gravely  wait 
ing  for  the  flying  wagon  to  pass.  Thus  it  became  a  clear 
case  of  sauve  gui  pent,  and  the  devil  take  the  hindermost. 
There  was  nothing  in  the  world  for  Behemoth  to  do  but 
wildly  leap  under  the  hoofs  for  his  life.  This  he  did  success 
fully.  But  on  the  other  side  he  met  the  spectacled  citizen 
full  and  fair,  and  down  they  went  together  with  a  thud. 

The  little  man  came  promptly  to  a  sitting  posture  and 
took  stock  of  the  wreck.  His  hat  he  could  not  see  anywhere, 
the  reason  being  that  he  was  sitting  on  it.  The  paper  bag, 
of  course,  had  burst ;  some  of  the  apples  had  rolled  to  amaz 
ing  distances,  and  newsboys,  entire  strangers  to  the  fallen 
gentleman,  were  eating  them  with  cries  of  pleasure.  This 
he  saw  in  one  pained  glance.  But  on  the  very  heels  of  the 
dog,  it  seemed,  came  hurrying  a  girl  with  marks  of  great 
anxiety  on  her  face. 

"Can  you  possibly  forgive  him?  That  fire-alarm  thing 
scared  him  crazy  —  he 's  usually  so  good !  You  are  n't  hurt, 
are  you?  I  do  hope  so  much  that  you  are  n't?" 


QUEED  9 

The  young  man,  sitting  calmly  in  the  street,  glanced  up 
at  Miss  Weyland  with  no  sign  of  interest. 

"  I  have  no  complaint  to  make,"  he  answered,  precisely; 
"  though  the  loss  of  my  fruit  seems  unfortunate,  to  say  the 
least  of  it." 

"I  know!  The  way  they  fell  on  them,"  she  answered,  as 
self-unconscious  as  he  —  "quite  as  though  you  had  offered 
to  treat!  I  'm  very  much  mortified  —  But —  are  you  hurt? 
I  thought  for  a  minute  that  the  coal  cart  was  going  right 
over  you." 

A  crowd  had  sprung  up  in  a  wink;  a  circle  of  interested 
faces  watching  the  unembarrassed  girl  apologizing  to  the 
studious-looking  little  man  who  sat  so  calmly  upon  his  hat 
in  the  middle  of  the  street.  Meantime  all  traffic  on  that  side 
was  hopelessly  blocked.  Swearing  truck  drivers  stood  up  on 
their  seats  from  a  block  away  to  see  what  had  halted  the 
procession. 

"But  what  is  the  object  of  a  dog  like  that?"  inquired  the 
man  ruminatively.  "What  good  is  he?  What  is  he  for?" 

"Why  —  why  —  why,"  said  she,  looking  ready  to  laugh 
—  "he's  not  a  utilitarian  dog  at  all,  you  see!  He's  a  pleas 
ure-dog,  you  know  —  just  a  big,  beautiful  dog  to  give 
pleasure!  —  " 

"The  pleasure  he  has  given  me,"  said  the  man,  gravely 
producing  his  derby  from  beneath  him  and  methodically 
undenting  it,  "is  negligible.  I  may  say  non-existent." 

From  somewhere  rose  a  hoarse  titter.  The  girl  glanced 
up,  and  for  the  first  time  became  aware  that  her  position 
was  somewhat  unconventional.  A  very  faint  color  sprang 
into  her  cheeks,  but  she  was  not  the  kind  to  retreat  in  dis 
order.  West  dodged  through  the  blockade  in  time  to  hear 
her  say  with  a  final,  smiling  bow: 

"I'm  so  glad  you  aren't  hurt,  believe  me  .  .  .  And  if 
my  dog  has  given  you  no  pleasure,  you  may  like  to  think 
that  you  have  given  him  a  great  deal." 

A  little  flushed  but  not  defeated,  her  gloved  hand  knotted 
in  Behemoth's  gigantic  scruff,  she  moved  away,  resigning  the 


io  QUEED 

situation  to  West.  West  handled  it  in  his  best  manner, 
civilly  assisting  the  little  man  to  rise,  and  bowing  himself  off 
with  the  most  graceful  expressions  of  regret  for  the  mishap. 

Miss  Weyland  was  walking  slowly,  waiting  for  him,  and 
he  fell  in  beside  her  on  the  sidewalk. 

"  Don't  speak  to  me  suddenly,"  said  she,  in  rather  a  muf 
fled  voice.  "  I  don't  want  to  scream  on  a  public  street." 

"Scratch  a  professor  and  you  find  a  Tartar,"  said  West, 
laughing  too.  "When  I  finally  caught  you,  laggard  that  I 
was,  you  looked  as  if  he  were  being  rude." 

Miss  Weyland  questioned  the  rudeness;  she  said  that  the 
man  was  only  superbly  natural.  "Thoughts  came  to  him  and 
he  blabbed  them  out  artlessly.  The  only  things  that  he 
seemed  in  the  least  interested  in  were  his  apples  and  Bee. 
Don't  you  think  from  this  that  he  must  be  a  floral  and  faunal 
naturalist?" 

"No  Goth,  at  any  rate.  Did  you  happen  to  notice  the 
tome  sticking  out  of  his  coat  pocket?  It  was  The  Religion 
of  Humanity,  unless  my  old  eyes  deceived  me.  Who  under 
heaven  reads  Comte  nowadays?" 

"Not  me,"  said  Miss  Weyland. 

"There's  nothing  to  it.  As  a  wealthy  old  friend  of  mine 
once  remarked,  people  who  read  that  sort  of  books  never 
make  over  eighteen  hundred  a  year." 

On  that  they  turned  into  Saltman's.  There  much  sta 
tionery  and  collateral  stuff  was  bought  for  cash  paid  down, 
and  all  for  the  use  ot  the  Department.  Next,  at  a  harness- 
store,  a  leash  was  bargained  for  and  obtained,  and  Behe 
moth  bowled  over  no  more  young  men  that  day.  There 
after,  the  two  set  their  faces  westerly  till  they  came  to  the 
girl's  home,  where  the  dog  was  delivered  to  the  cook,  and 
Miss  Weyland  went  upstairs  to  kiss  her  mother.  Still  later 
they  set  out  northward  through  the  lamp-lit  night  for  the 
older  part  of  town,  where  resided  the  aunt  on  whose  behalf 
there  was  dunning  to  be  done  that  night. 

Charles  Gardiner  West  asserted  that  he  had  not  a  thing 
in  all  this  world  to  do,  and  that  erranding  was  only  another 


QUEED  ii 

way  of  taking  a  walk,  when  you  came  to  think  of  it.  She 
was  frankly  glad  of  his  company ;  to  be  otherwise  was  to  be 
fantastic;  and  now  as  they  strolled  she  led  him  to  talk  of 
his  work,  which  was  never  difficult.  For  West,  despite  his 
rising  prosperity,  was  dissatisfied  with  his  calling,  the  reason 
being,  as  he  himself  sometimes  put  it,  that  his  heart  did  not 
abide  with  the  money  changers. 

"Sometimes  at  night,"  he  said  seriously,  "I  look  back 
over  the  busy  day  and  ask  myself  what  it  has  all  amounted 
to.  Suppose  I  did  all  the  world's  stock-jobbing,  what  would 
I  really  have  accomplished?  You  may  say  that  I  could 
take  all  the  money  I  made  and  spend  it  for  free  hospi 
tals,  but  would  I  do  it?  No.  The  more  I  made,  the  more 
I  'd  want  for  myself,  the  more  all  my  interest  and  ambition 
would  twine  themselves  around  the  counting-room.  You 
can't  serve  two  masters,  can  you,  Miss  Weyland?  Uplift 
ing  those  who  need  uplifting  is  a  separate  business,  all  by 
itself." 

"You  could  make  the  money,"  laughed  she,  "and  let 
me  spend  it  for  you.  I  know  this  minute  where  I  could  put 
a  million  to  glorious  advantage." 

"  I'm  going  to  get  out  of  it,"  said  West.  "  I  've  told  Semple 
so — though  perhaps  it  ought  not  to  go  further  just  yet. 
I'd  enjoy,"  said  he,  "just  such  work  as  yours.  There's 
none  finer.  You  'd  like  me  immensely  as  your  royal  master, 
I  suppose?  Want  nothing  better  than  to  curtsy  and  kow 
tow  when  I  flung  out  a  gracious  order?  —  as,  for  instance, 
to  shut  up  shop  and  go  and  take  a  holiday?" 

"Delicious!  Though  I  doubt  if  anybody  in  the  world 
could  improve  on  Mr.  Dayne."  Suddenly  a  new  thought 
struck  her,  and  she  made  a  faint  grimace.  "There's  nothing 
so  very  fine  about  my  present  work  —  oh  me!  I  '11  give  you 
that  if  you  want  it." 

"  I  see  I  must  look  this  gift  horse  over  very  closely.  What 
is  it?" 

"They  call  it  dunning." 

"  I  forgot.  You  started  to  tell  me,  and  then  your  dog  ran 


ifl  QUEED 

amuck  and  began  butting  perfect  strangers  all  over  the 
place." 

"Oh,"  said  she,  "it's  the  commonest  little  story  in  the 
world.  All  landladies  can  tell  them  to  you  by  the  hour. 
This  man  has  been  at  Aunt  Jennie's  nearly  a  month,  and 
what's  the  color  of  his  money  she  has  n't  the  faintest  idea. 
Such  is  the  way  our  bright  young  men  carve  out  their 
fortunes  —  the  true  Gothic  architecture!  Possibly  Aunt 
Jennie  has  thrown  out  one  or  two  delicate  hints,  carefully 
insulated  to  avoid  hurting  his  feelings.  You  know  the  way 
our  ladies  of  the  old  school  do  —  the  worst  collectors  the 
world  has  ever  seen.  So  she  telephoned  me  this  morning  — 
I  'm  her  business  woman,  you  see  —  asking  me  to  come  and 
advise  her,  and  I'm  coming,  and  after  supper — " 

"Well,  what '11  you  do?" 

"  I  'm  going  to  talk  with  him,  with  the  man.  I  'm  simply 
going  to  collect  that  money.  Or  if  I  can't  — " 

"What's  the  horrid  alternative?" 

"I'm  going  to  fire  him!" 

West  laughed  merrily.  His  face  always  looked  most  charm- 
ingwhen  he  smiled.  "  Upon  my  word  I  believe  you  can  doit." 

"I  have  done  it,  lots  of  times." 

"Ah!  And  is  the  ceremony  ever  attended  by  scenes  of 
storm  and  violence?" 

"Never.  They  march  like  little  lambs  when  I  say  the 
word .  Hay-foot  —  straw-foot ! ' ' 

"But  then  your  aunt  loses  their  arrears  of  board,  I  suppose." 

"Yes,  and  for  that  reason  I  never  fire  except  as  a  last 
desperate  resort.  Signs  of  penitence,  earnest  resolves  to 
lead  a  better  life,  are  always  noted  and  carefully  considered." 

"  If  you  should  need  help  with  this  customer  to-night  —  not 
that  I  think  you  will,  oh  no!  —  telephone  me.  I  'm  amazingly 
good  at  handling  bright  young  men.  This  is  your  aunt's, 
is  n't  it?" 

"No,  no  —  next  to  the  corner  over  there.  O  heavens! 
Look  —  look!" 

West  looked.    Up  the  front  steps  of  Miss  Weyland's 


QUEED  13 

Aunt  Jennie's  a  man  was  going,  a  smallish  man  in  a  suit 
of  dusty  clothes,  who  limped  as  he  walked.  The  electric  light 
at  the  corner  illumined  him  perfectly  —  glinted  upon  the 
spectacles,  touched  up  the  stout  volume  in  the  coat-pocket, 
beat  full  upon  the  swaybacked  derby,  whereon  its  owner  had 
sat  what  time  Charlotte  Lee  Weyland  apologized  for  the 
gaucherie  of  Behemoth.  And  as  they  watched,  this  man 
pushed  open  Aunt  Jennie's  front  door,  with  never  so  much 
as  a  glance  at  the  door-bell,  and  stepped  as  of  right 
inside. 

Involuntarily  West  and  Miss  Weyland  had  halted;  and 
now  they  stared  at  each  other  with  a  kind  of  wild  surmise 
which  rapidly  yielded  to  ludicrous  certainty.  West  broke 
into  a  laugh. 

"Well,  do  you  think  you'll  have  the  nerve  to  fire  him?'1 


II 

Mrs.  Paynter's  Boarding-House :  which  was  not  founded  as 
an  Eleemosynary  Institution. 

THERE  was  something  of  a  flutter  among  the  gathered 
boarders  when  Miss  Weyland  was  seen  to  be  enter 
ing  the  house,  and  William  Klinker,  who  announced 
the  fact  from  his  place  by  the  window,  added  that  that 
had  ought  to  help  some  with  the  supper.  He  reminded 
the  parlor  that  there  had  been  Porterhouse  the  last  time. 
Miss  Miller,  from  the  sofa,  told  Mr.  Klinker  archly  that  he 
was  so  material.  She  had  only  the  other  day  mastered  the 
word,  but  even  that  is  more  than  could  be  said  for  Mr. 
Klinker.  Major  Brooke  stood  by  the  Latrobe  heater,  read 
ing  the  evening  paper  under  a  flaring  gas-light.  He  habitu 
ally  came  down  early  to  get  it  before  anybody  else  had  a 
chance.  By  Miss  Miller  on  the  sofa  sat  Mr.  Bylash, 
stroking  the  glossy  moustache  which  other  ladies  before  her 
time  had  admired  intensely.  Despite  her  archness  Miss 
Miller  had  heard  with  a  pang  that  Miss  Weyland  was  com 
ing  to  supper,  and  her  reason  was  not  unconnected  with 
this  same  Mr.  Bylash.  In  earlier  meetings  she  had  vaguely 
noted  differences  between  Mrs.  Paynter's  pretty  niece  and 
herself.  True,  she  considered  these  differences  all  in  her 
own  favor,  as,  for  example,  her  far  larger  back  pompadour, 
with  the  puffs,  but  you  never  could  tell  about  gentlemen. 

"I'm  surprised,"  she  said  to  Mr.  Klinker,  "Mr.  Bylash 
did  n't  go  out  to  give  her  the  glad  hand,  and  welcome  her 
into  our  humble  coturee." 

Mr.  Bylash,  who  had  been  thinking  of  doing  that  very 
thing,  said  rather  shortly  that  the  ladies  present  quite 
satisfied  him. 

"And  who  do  you  think  brought  her  around  and  right 
up  to  the  door  ?  "  continued  William  Klinker,  taking  na 


QUEED  15 

notice  of  their  blandishments.  "Hon.  West  —  Charles 
Gardenia  West—  " 

A  scream  from  Miss  Miller  applauded  the  witty  hit. 

"Oh,  it  ain't  mine,"  said  Mr.  Klinker  modestly.  "I 
heard  a  fellow  get  it  off  at  the  shop  the  other  day.  He's  a 
pretty  smooth  fellow,  Charles  Gardenia  is  —  a  little  too 
smooth  for  my  way  of  thinking.  A  fellow  that's  always 
so  smilin'  —  Oh,  you  Smithy!"  he  suddenly  yelled  out  the 
window — "Smithy!  Hey!  —  Aw,  I  can  beat  the  face  off 
you! — Awright — eight  sharp  at  the  same  place.  —  Go  on, 
you  fat  Mohawk  you!  .  .  .  But  say,"  he  resumed  to  the 
parlor,  "y'know  that  little  woman  is  a  stormy  petrel  for 
this  house  —  that 's  right.  Remember  the  last  time  she  was 
here  —  the  time  we  had  the  Porterhouse?  Conference  in 
the  dining-room  after  supper,  and  the  next  morning  out 
went  the  trunks  of  that  red-head  fellow — from  Baltimore 
—  what's  his  name?  —  Milhiser." 

"Well,  she  has  n't  got  any  call  to  intrude  in  my  affairs," 
said  Mr.  Bylash,  still  rather  miffed.  "I'm  here  to  tell  you 
that!" 

"Oh,  I  ain't  speakin'  of  the  reg'lars,"  answered  Klinker, 
"so  don't  get  nervous.  But  say,  I  got  kind  of  a  hunch  that 
here  is  where  the  little  Doc  gets  his." 

Klinker's  hunch  was  not  without  foundation;  this  very 
question  was  being  agitated  at  that  moment  in  the  room 
just  over  his  head.  Miss  Weyland,  having  passed  the  parlor 
portieres  with  no  thought  that  her  movements  were  at 
tracting  interest  on  the  other  side  of  them,  skipped  up  the 
stairs,  rapped  on  her  Aunt  Jennie's  door,  and  ran  breath 
lessly  into  the  room.  Her  aunt  was  sitting  by  the  bureau, 
reading  a  novel  from  the  circulating  library.  Though  she 
had  been  sitting  right  here  since  about  four  o'clock,  only 
getting  up  once  to  light  the  gas,  she  had  a  casual  air  like 
one  who  is  only  killing  a  moment's  time  between  important 
engagements.  She  looked  up  at  the  girl's  entrance,  and  an 
affectionate  smile  lit  her  well-lined  face. 

"My  dear  Sharlee!  I'm  so  glad  to  see  you." 


16  QUEED 

They  kissed  tenderly. 

"Oh,  Aunt  Jennie,  tell  me!  Is  he  —  this  man  you  tele 
phoned  me  about  —  is  he  a  little,  small,  dried  young  man, 
with  spectacles  and  a  brown  derby,  and  needing  a  hair-cut, 
and  the  gravest,  drollest  manner  in  the  world?  Tell  me 
—  is  he?" 

"My  dear,  you  have  described  him  to  the  life.  Where 
did  you  see  him?" 

Sharlee  collapsed  upon  the  bed.  Presently  she  revived 
and  outlined  the  situation  to  Aunt  Jennie. 

Mrs.  Paynter  listened  with  some  interest.  If  humor  is  a 
defect,  as  they  tell  us  nowadays,  she  was  almost  a  fault 
less  woman.  And  in  her  day  she  had  been  a  beauty  and  a 
toast.  You  hear  it  said  generously  of  a  thousand,  but  it 
happened  to  be  true  in  her  case.  The  high-bred  regularity 
of  feature  still  survived,  but  she  had  let  herself  go  in  latter 
years,  as  most  women  will  who  have  other  things  than  them 
selves  to  think  about,  and  hard  things  at  that.  Her  old 
black  dress  was  carelessly  put  on;  she  could  look  at  herself 
in  the  mirror  by  merely  leaning  forward  an  inch  or  two,  and 
it  never  occurred  to  her  to  do  it  —  an  uncanny  thing  in  a 
woman. 

"I'm  sure  it  sounds  quite  like  him,"  said  Mrs.  Paynter, 
when  her  niece  had  finished.  "And  so  Gardiner  West 
walked  around  with  you.  I  hope,  my  dear,  you  asked  him 
in  to  supper?  We  have  an  exceptionally  nice  Porterhouse 
steak  to-night.  But  I  suppose  he  would  scorn  — " 

The  girl  interrupted  her,  abolishing  and  demolishing  such 
a  thought.  Mr.  West  would  have  been  only  too  pleased, 
she  said,  but  she  positively  would  not  ask  him,  because  of 
the  serious  work  that  was  afoot  that  night. 

"The  pleasure  I  Ve  so  far  given  your  little  man,"  laughed 
she,  patting  her  aunt's  cheeks  with  her  two  hands,  "has  been 
negligible  —  I  have  his  word  for  that  —  and  to-night  it  is 
going  to  be  the  same,  only  more  so." 

Sharlee  arose,  took  off  her  coat  and  furs,  laid  them  on  the 
bed,  and  going  to  the  bureau  began  fixing  her  hair  in  the 


QUEED  17 

back  before  the  long  mirror.  No  matter  how  well  a  woman 
looks  to  the  untrained,  or  man's,  eye,  she  can  always  put  in 
some  time  pleasurably  fixing  her  hair  in  the  back. 

"Now,"  said  Sharlee,  "to  business.  Tell  me  all  about 
the  little  dead-beat." 

"It  is  four  weeks  next  Monday,"  said  Mrs.  Paynter, 
putting  a  shoe-horn  in  her  novel  to  mark  the  place,  "since 
the  young  man  came  to  me.  He  was  from  New  York,  and 
just  off  the  train.  He  said  that  he  had  been  recommended 
to  my  house,  but  would  not  say  by  whom,  nor  could  he  give 
references.  I  did  not  insist  on  them,  for  I  can't  be  too  strict, 
Sharlee,  with  all  the  other  boarding- places  there  are  and 
that  room  standing  empty  for  two  months  hand-running, 
and  then  for  three  months  before  that,  before  Miss  Catlett, 
I  mean.  The  fact  is,  that  I  ought  to  be  over  on  the  Avenue, 
where  I  could  have  only  the  best  people.  It  would  be  in 
finitely  more  lucrative  —  why,  my  dear,  you  should  hear 
Amy  Marsden  talk  of  her  enormous  profits!  And  Amy, 
while  a  dear,  sweet  little  woman,  is  not  clever!  I  remember 
as  girls  —  but  to  go  back  even  of  that  to  the  very  heart  of 
the  matter,  who  ever  heard  of  a  clever  Wilkerson  ?  For  she, 
you  know,  was  born  ..." 

"Never  you  mind  Mrs.  Marsden,  Aunt  Jennie,"  said  the 
girl,  gently  drawing  her  back  to  the  muttons,  —  "we'll  make 
lots  more  money  than  she  some  day.  So  you  gave  him  the 
room,  then?" 

"Yes,  the  room  known  as  the  third  hall  back.  A  small, 
neat,  economical  room,  entirely  suitable  for  a  single  gentle 
man.  I  gave  him  my  lowest  price,  though  I  must  say  I  did 
not  dream  then  that  he  would  spend  all  his  time  in  his  room, 
apparently  having  no  downtown  occupation,  which  is  cer 
tainly  not  what  one  expects  from  gentlemen,  who  get  low 
terms  on  the  silent  understanding  that  they  will  take  them 
selves  out  of  the  house  directly  after  breakfast.  Nevertheless 
—  will  you  believe  it?  —  ten  days  passed  and  not  a  word  was 
said  about  payment.  So  one  morning  I  stopped  him  in  the 
hall,  as  though  for  a  pleasant  talk.  However,  I  was  careful 


18  QUEED 

to  introduce  the  point,  by  means  of  an  anecdote  I  told  him, 
that  guests  here  were  expected  to  pay  by  the  week.  Of 
course  I  supposed  that  the  hint  would  be  sufficient." 

"But  it  was  n't,  alas?" 

"On  the  contrary,  ten  days  again  passed,  and  you  might 
suppose  there  was  no  such  thing  as  money  in  all  this  world. 
Then  I  resolved  to  approach  him  directly.  I  knocked  on  his 
door,  and  when  he  opened  it,  I  told  him  plainly  and  in  so 
many  words  that  I  would  be  very  much  gratified  if  he  would 
let  me  have  a  check  whenever  convenient,  as  unfortun 
ately  I  had  heavy  bills  due  that  must  be  met.  I  was  very 
much  mortified,  Sharlee!  As  I  stood  there  facing  that  young 
man,  dunning  him  like  a  grocer's  clerk,  it  flashed  into  my 
mind  to  wonder  what  your  great-grandfather,  the  Governor, 
would  think  if  he  could  have  looked  down  and  seen  me.  For 
as  you  know,  my  dear,  though  I  doubt  if  you  altogether  real 
ize  it  at  all  times,  since  our  young  people  of  to-day,  I  regret 
to  have  to  say  it  —  though  of  course  I  do  except  you  from 
this  criticism  — " 

By  gentle  interruption  and  deft  transition,  Sharlee  once 
more  wafted  the  conversation  back  to  the  subject  in  hand. 
"And  when  you  went  so  far  as  to  tell  him  this,  how  did  he 
take  it?" 

"He  took  it  admirably.  He  told  me  that  I  need  feel  no 
concern  about  the  matter;  that  while  out  of  funds  for  the 
moment,  doubtless  he  would  be  in  funds  again  shortly.  His 
manner  was  dignified,  calm,  unabashed  — " 

"But  it  did  n't  blossom,  as  we  might  say,  in  money?" 

"As  to  that  —  no.  What  are  you  to  do,  Sharlee?  I  feel 
sure  the  man  is  not  dishonest,  —  in  fact  he  has  a  singularly 
honest  face,  transparently  so,  —  but  he  is  only  somehow 
queer.  He  appears  an  engrossed,  absent-minded  young  man 
—  what  is  the  word  I  want?  —  an  eccentric.  That  is  what 
he  is,  an  engrossed  young  eccentric." 

Sharlee  leaned  against  the  bureau  and  looked  at  her  aunt 
thoughtfully.  "Do  you  gather,  Aunt  Jennie,  that  he's 
a  gentleman?" 


QUEED  19 

Mrs.  Paynter  threw  out  her  hands  helplessly.  "What 
does  the  term  mean  nowadays?  The  race  of  gentlemen,  as 
the  class  existed  in  my  day,  seems  to  be  disappearing  from 
the  face  of  the  earth.  We  see  occasional  survivals  of  the 
old  order,  like  Gardiner  West  or  the  young  Byrd  men,  but 
as  a  whole  —  well,  my  dear,  I  will  only  say  that  the  modern 

standards  would  have  excited  horror  fifty  years  ago  and 
it 

"Well,  but  according  to  the  modern  standards,  do  you 
think  he  is?" 

"  I  don't  know.  He  is  and  he  is  n't.  But  no  —  no  —  no! 
He  is  not  one.  No  man  can  be  a  gentleman  who  is  utterly 
indifferent  to  the  comfort  and  feelings  of  others,  do  you 
think  so?" 

"Indeed,  no!  And  is  that  what  he  is?" 

"I  will  illustrate  by  an  incident,"  said  Mrs.  Paynter. 
"As  I  say,  this  young  man  spends  his  entire  time  in  his 
room,  where  he  is,  I  believe,  engaged  in  writing  a  book." 

"  Oh,  me !  Then  he 's  penniless,  depend  upon  it." 

"Well,  when  we  had  the  frost  and  freeze  early  last  week, 
he  came  to  me  one  night  and  complained  of  the  cold  in  his 
room.  You  know,  Sharlee,  I  do  not  rent  that  room  as  a  sit 
ting-room,  nor  do  I  expect  to  heat  it,  at  the  low  price,  other 
than  the  heat  from  the  halls.  So  I  invited  him  to  make  use 
of  the  dining-room  in  the  evenings,  which,  as  you  know, 
with  the  folding-doors  drawn,  and  the  yellow  lamp  lit,  is 
converted  to  all  intents  and  purposes  into  a  quiet  and  com 
fortable  reading-room.  Somewhat  grumblingly  he  went 
down.  Fifi  was  there  as  usual,  doing  her  algebra  by  the 
lamp.  The  young  man  took  not  the  smallest  notice  of  her, 
and  presently  when  she  coughed  several  times  —  the  child's 
cold  happened  to  be  bad  that  night  —  he  looked  up  sharply 
and  asked  her  please  to  stop.  Fifi  said  that  she  was  afraid  she 
could  n't  help  it.  He  replied  that  it  was  impossible  for  him 
to  work  in  the  room  with  a  noise  of  that  sort,  and  either 
the  noise  or  he  would  have  to  vacate.  So  Fifi  gathered  up 
her  things  and  left.  I  found  her,  half  an  hour  later,  in  her 


ao  QUEED 

little  bed-room,  which  was  ice-cold,  coughing  and  crying 
over  her  sums,  which  she  was  trying  to  work  at  the  bureau. 
That  was  how  I  found  out  about  it.  The  child  would  never 
have  said  a  word  to  me." 

"How  simply  outrageous!"  said  the  girl,  and  became 
silent  and  thoughtful. 

"Well,  what  do  you  think  I'd  better  do,  Sharlee?" 

"  I  think  you  'd  better  let  me  waylay  him  in  the  hall  after 
supper  and  tell  him  that  the  time  has  come  when  he  must 
either  pay  up  or  pack  up." 

"My  dear!   Can  you  well  be  as  blunt  as  that?" 

"Dear  Aunt  Jennie,  as  I  view  it,  you  are  not  running  an 
eleemosynary  institution  here?" 

"Of  course  not,"  replied  Aunt  Jennie,  who  really  did  not 
know  whether  she  was  or  not. 

Sharlee  dropped  into  a  chair  and  began  manicuring  her 
pretty  little  nails.  "The  purpose  of  this  establishment  is  to 
collect  money  from  the  transient  and  resident  public.  Now 
you're  not  a  bit  good  at  collecting  money  because  you're 
so  well-bred,  but  I'm  not  so  awfully  well-bred  — " 

" You  are—  " 

"I'm  bold  —  blunt  —  brazen!  I'm  forward.  I'm  reso 
lute  and  grim.  In  short,  I  belong  to  the  younger  generation 
which  you  despise  so  — " 

"  I  don't  despise  you,  you  dear  — " 

"Come,"  said  Sharlee,  springing  up;  "let's  go  down. 
I'm  wild  to  meet  Mr.  Bylash  again.  Is  he  wearing  the 
moleskin  vest  to-night,  do  you  know?  I  was  fascinated 
by  it  the  last  time  I  was  here.  Aunt  Jennie,  what  is  the 
name  of  this  young  man  —  the  one  I  may  be  compelled  to 
bounce?" 

"His  name  is  Queed.   Did  you  ever  — ?" 

"Queed?  Queed  ?  Q-u-e-e-d  ?" 

"An  odd  name,  is  n't  it?  There  were  no  such  people  in 
my  day." 

"Probably  after  to-morrow  there  will  be  none  such  once 
more." 


QUEED  21 

"Mr.  Klinker  has  christened  him  the  little  Doctor  —  a 
hit  at  his  appearance  and  studious  habits,  you  see  —  and 
even  the  servants  have  taken  it  up." 

"Aunt  Jennie,"  said  Sharlee  at  the  door,  "when  you 
introduce  the  little  Doctor  to  me,  refer  to  me  as  your  busi 
ness  woman,  won't  you?  Say  'This  is  my  niece,  Miss 
Weyland,  who  looks  after  my  business  affairs  for  me,'  or 
something  like  that,  will  you?  It  will  explain  to  him  why  I, 
a  comparative  stranger,  show  such  an  interest  in  his  finan 
cial  affairs." 

Mrs.  Paynter  said,  "Certainly,  my  dear,"  and  they  went 
down,  the  older  lady  disappearing  toward  the  dining-room. 
In  the  parlor  Sharlee  was  greeted  cordially  and  somewhat 
respectfully.  Major  Brooke,  who  appeared  to  have  taken 
an  extra  toddy  in  honor  of  her  coming,  or  for  any  other 
reason  why,  flung  aside  his  newspaper  and  seized  both  her 
hands.  Mr.  By  lash,  in  the  moleskin  waistcoat,  sure  enough, 
bowed  low  and  referred  to  her  agreeably  as  "stranger," 
nor  did  he  again  return  to  Miss  Miller's  side  on  the  sofa. 
That  young  lady  was  gay  and  giggling,  but  watchful  withal. 
When  Sharlee  was  not  looking,  Miss  Miller's  eye,  rather 
hard  now,  roved  over  her  ceaselessly  from  the  point  of  her 
toe  to  the  top  of  her  feather.  What  was  the  trick  she  had, 
the  little  way  with  her,  that  so  delightfully  unlocked  the 
gates  of  gentlemen's  hearts? 

At  supper  they  were  lively  and  gay.  The  butter  and 
preserves  were  in  front  of  Sharlee,  for  her  to  help  to;  by 
her  side  sat  Fifi,  the  young  daughter  of  the  house.  Major 
Brooke  sat  at  the  head  of  the  table  and  carved  the  Porter 
house,  upon  which  when  the  eyes  of  William  Klinker  fell, 
they  irrepressibly  shot  forth  gleams.  At  the  Major's  right 
sat  his  wife,  a  pale,  depressed,  nervous  woman,  as  anybody 
who  had  lived  thirty  years  with  the  gallant  officer  her  hus 
band  had  a  right  to  be.  She  was  silent,  but  the  Major  talked 
a  great  deal,  not  particularly  well.  Much  the  same  may  be 
said  of  Mr.  Bylash  and  Miss  Miller.  Across  the  table  from 
Mrs.  Brooke  stood  an  empty  chair.  It  belonged  to  the  little 


22  QUEED 

Doctor,  Mr.  Queed.  Across  the  table  from  Sharlee  stood  an 
other.  This  one  belonged  to  the  old  professor,  Nicolovius. 
When  the  meal  was  well  along,  Nicolovius  came  in,  bowed 
around  the  table  in  his  usual  formal  way,  and  silently  took 
his  place.  While  Sharlee  liked  everybody  in  the  boarding- 
house,  including  Miss  Miller,  Professor  Nicolovius  was  the 
only  one  of  them  that  she  considered  at  all  interesting. 
This  was  because  of  his  strongly-cut  face,  like  the  grand- 
ducal  villain  in  a  ten-twenty-thirty  melodrama,  and  his 
habit  of  saying  savage  things  in  a  soft,  purring  voice.  He 
was  rude  to  everybody,  and  particularly  rude,  so  Sharlee 
thought,  to  her.  As  for  the  little  Doctor,  he  did  not  come 
in  at  all.  Half-way  through  supper,  Sharlee  looked  at  her 
aunt  and  gave  a  meaning  glance  at  the  empty  seat. 

"I  don't  know  what  to  make  of  it,"  said  Mrs.  Paynter 
sotto  voce.  "  He 's  usually  so  regular. " 

To  the  third  floor  she  dispatched  the  colored  girl  Emma, 
to  knock  upon  Mr.  Queed's  door.  Presently  Emma  re 
turned  with  the  report  that  she  had  knocked,  but  could 
obtain  no  answer. 

"He's  probably  fallen  asleep  over  his  book,"  murmured 
Sharlee.  "I  feel  certain  it's  that  kind  of  book." 

But  Mrs.  Paynter  said  that  he  rarely  slept,  even  at  night. 

"...  Right  on  my  own  front  porch,  mind  you!"  Major 
Brooke  was  declaiming.  "And,  gentlemen,  I  shook  my  finger 
in  his  face  and  said,  'Sir,  I  never  yet  met  a  Republican  who 
was  not  a  rogue!'  Yes,  sir,  that  is  just  what  I  told  him  — " 

"I'm  afraid,"  said  Nicolovius,  smoothly,  —  it  was  the 
only  word  he  uttered  during  the  meal,  —  "your  remark 
harrows  Miss  Weyland  with  reminders  of  the  late  Mr. 
Surface." 

The  Major  stopped  short,  and  a  silence  fell  over  the  table. 
It  was  promptly  broken  by  Mrs.  Paynter,  who  invited  Mrs. 
Brooke  to  have  a  second  cup  of  coffee.  Sharlee  looked  at 
her  plate  and  said  nothing.  Everybody  thought  that  the 
old  professor's  remark  was  in  bad  taste,  for  it  was  gener 
ally  known  that  Henry  G.  Surface  was  one  subject  that  even 


QUEED  23 

Miss  Weyland's  intimate  friends  never  mentioned  to  her. 
Nicolovius,  however,  appeared  absolutely  unconcerned  by 
the  boarders'  silent  rebuke.  He  ate  on,  rapidly  but  abstemi 
ously,  and  finished  before  Mr.  Bylash,  who  had  had  twenty 
minutes'  start  of  him. 

The  last  boarder  rising  drew  shut  the  folding-doors  into 
the  parlor,  while  the  ladies  of  the  house  remained  to  super 
intend  and  assist  in  clearing  off  the  supper  things.  The 
last  boarder  this  time  was  Mr.  Bylash,  who  tried  without 
success  to  catch  Miss  Weyland's  eye  as  he  slid  to  the  doors. 
He  hung  around  in  the  parlor  waiting  for  her  till  8.30,  at 
which  time,  having  neither  seen  nor  heard  sign  of  her,  he 
took  Miss  Miller  out  to  the  moving-picture  shows.  In  the 
dining-room,  when  Emma  had  trayed  out  the  last  of  the 
things,  the  ladies  put  away  the  unused  silver,  watered  the 
geranium,  set  back  some  of  the  chairs,  folded  up  the  white 
cloth,  placing  it  in  the  sideboard  drawer,  spread  the  pretty 
Turkey-red  one  in  its  stead,  set  the  reading  lamp  upon  it; 
and  just  then  the  clock  struck  eight. 

"Now  then,"  said  Sharlee. 

So  the  three  sat  down  and  held  a  council  of  war  as  to  how 
little  Doctor  Queed,  the  young  man  who  would  n't  pay 
his  board,  was  to  be  brought  into  personal  contact  with 
Charlotte  Lee  Weyland,  the  grim  and  resolute  collector. 
Various  stratagems  were  proposed,  amid  much  merriment. 
But  the  collector  herself  adhered  to  her  original  idea  of  a 
masterly  waiting  game. 

"Only  trust  me,"  said  she.  "He  can't  spend  the  rest  of 
his  life  shut  up  in  that  room  in  a  state  of  dreadful  siege. 
Hunger  or  thirst  will  force  him  out;  he'll  want  to  buy  some 
of  those  apples,  or  to  mail  a  letter  — " 

Fifi,  who  sat  on  the  arm  of  Sharlee's  chair,  laughed  and 
coughed.  " He  never  writes  any.  And  he  never  has  gotten 
but  one,  and  that  came  to-night." 

"Fifi,  did  you  take  your  syrup  before  supper?  Well,  go 
and  take  it  this  minute." 

"Mother,  it  does  n't  do  any  good." 


24  QUEED 

"The  doctor  gave  it  to  you,  my  child,  and  it's  going  to 
make  you  better  soon." 

Sharlee  followed  Fifi  out  with  troubled  eyes.  However, 
Mrs.  Paynter  at  once  drew  her  back  to  the  matter  in  hand. 

"Sharlee,  do  you  know  what  would  be  the  very  way  to 
settle  this  little  difficulty?  To  write  him  a  formal,  business 
like  letter.  We'll—" 

"No,  I've  thought  of  that,  Aunt  Jennie,  and  I  don't 
believe  it 's  the  way.  A  letter  could  n't  get  to  the  bottom  of 
the  matter.  You  see,  we  want  to  find  out  something  about 
this  man,  and  why  he  isn't  paying,  and  whether  there  is 
reason  to  think  he  can  and  will  pay.  Besides,  I  think  he 
needs  a  talking  to  on  general  principles." 

"Well  —  but  how  are  you  going  to  do  it,  my  dear?" 

"Play  a  Fabian  game.  Wait!  —  be  stealthy  and  wait! 
If  he  does  n't  come  out  of  hiding  to-night,  I  '11  return  for 
him  to-morrow.  I'll  keep  on  coming,  night  after  night, 
night  after  night,  n —  Some  one's  knocking — " 

"Come  in,"  said  Mrs.  Paynter,  looking  up. 

The  door  leading  into  the  hall  opened,  and  the  man  him 
self  stood  upon  the  threshold,  looking  at  them  absently. 

"May  I  have  some  supper,  Mrs.  Paynter?  I  was  closely 
engaged  and  failed  to  notice  the  time." 

Sharlee  arose.  "Certainly.  I'll  get  you  some  at  once," 
she  answered  innocently  enough.  But  to  herself  she  was 
saying:  "The  Lord  has  delivered  him  into  my  hand." 


Ill 

Encounter  between  Charlotte  Lee  Weyland,  a  Landlady's 
Agent,  and  Doctor  Queed,  a  Young  Man  who  would  n't  pay 
his  Board. 

SHARLEE  glanced  at  Mrs.  Paynter,  who  caught  her 
self  and  said:  "Mr.  Queed,  my  niece  —  Miss  Wey 
land." 

But  over  the  odious  phrase,  "my  business  woman," 
her  lips  boggled  and  balked;  not  to  save  her  life  could  she 
bring  herself  to  damn  her  own  niece  with  such  an  intro 
duction. 

Noticing  the  omission  and  looking  through  the  reasons 
for  it  as  through  window-glass,  Sharlee  smothered  a  laugh, 
and  bowed.  Mr.  Queed  bowed,  but  did  not  laugh  or  even 
smile.  He  drew  up  a  chair  at  his  usual  place  and  sat  down. 
As  by  an  involuntary  reflex,  his  left  hand  dropped  toward 
his  coat-pocket,  whence  the  top  edges  of  a  book  could  be 
descried  protruding.  Mrs.  Paynter  moved  vaguely  toward 
the  door.  As  for  her  business  woman,  she  made  at  once  for 
the  kitchen,  where  Emma  and  her  faithful  co-worker  and 
mother,  Laura,  rose  from  their  supper  to  assist  her.  With 
her  own  hands  the  girl  cut  a  piece  of  the  Porterhouse  for 
Mr.  Queed.  Creamed  potatoes,  two  large  spoonfuls,  were 
added ;  two  rolls ;  some  batterbread ;  coffee,  which  had  to  be 
diluted  with  a  little  hot  water  to  make  out  the  full  cup; 
butter;  damson  preserves  in  a  saucer:  all  of  which  duly  set 
forth  and  arranged  on  a  shiny  black  "waiter." 

"Enough  for  a  whole  platform  of  doctors,"  said  Sharlee, 
critically  reviewing  the  spread.  "Thank  you,  Emma." 

She  took  the  tray  in  both  hands  and  pushed  open  the 
swing-doors  with  her  side,  thus  making  her  ingress  to  the 
dining-room  in  a  sort  of  crab-fashion.  Mrs.  Paynter  was 


a6  QUEED 

gone.  Mr.  Queed  sat  alone  in  the  dining-room.  His  book 
lay  open  on  the  table  and  he  was  humped  over  it,  hand  in 
his  hair. 

Having  set  her  tray  on  the  side-table,  Sharlee  came  to  his 
side  with  the  plate  of  steak  and  potatoes.  He  did  not  stir, 
and  presently  she  murmured,  "I  beg  your  pardon." 

He  looked  up  half-startled,  not  seeming  to  take  in  for  the 
first  second  who  or  what  she  was. 

"Oh  .  .  .  yes." 

He  moved  his  book,  keeping  his  finger  in  the  place,  and 
she  set  down  the  plate.  Next  she  brought  the  appurten 
ances  one  by  one,  the  butter,  coffee,  and  so  on.  The  old 
mahogany  sideboard  yielded  knife,  fork,  and  spoon;  salt 
and  pepper;  from  the  right-hand  drawer,  a  fresh  napkin. 
These  placed,  she  studied  them,  racked  her  brains  a  mo 
ment  and,  from  across  the  table  — 

"Is  there  anything  else?" 

Mr.  Queed's  eye  swept  over  his  equipment  with  intelli 
gent  quickness.  "A  glass  of  water,  please." 

"Oh!  —  Certainly." 

Sharlee  poured  a  glass  from  the  battered  silver  pitcher  on 
the  side-table  —  the  one  that  the  Yankees  threw  out  of  the 
window  in  May,  1862 — and  duly  placed  it.  Mr.  Queed  was 
oblivious  to  the  little  courtesy.  By  this  time  he  had  propped 
his  book  open  against  the  plate  of  rolls  and  was  reading  it 
between  cuts  on  the  steak.  Beside  the  plate  he  had  laid 
his  watch,  an  open-faced  nickel  one  about  the  size  of  a 
desk-clock. 

"Do  you  think  that  is  everything?" 

"  I  believe  that  is  all." 

"Do  you  remember  me?"  then  asked  Sharlee. 

He  glanced  at  her  briefly  through  his  spectacles,  his  eyes 
soon  returning  to  his  supper. 

"I  think  not." 

The  girl  smiled  suddenly,  all  by  herself.  "It  was  my  dog 
that  —  upset  you  on  Main  Street  this  afternoon.  You 
may  remember  .  .  .?  I  thought  you  seemed  to  —  to  limp 


QUEED  27 

a  little  when  you  came  in  just  now.  I'm  awfully  sorry  for 
the  —  mishap  —  " 

"  It  is  of  no  consequence,"  he  said,  with  some  signs  of  un 
rest.  "  I  walk  seldom.  Your  —  pleasure-dog  was  uninjured, 
I  trust?" 

"Thank  you.   He  was  never  better." 

That  the  appearance  of  the  pleasure-dog's  owner  as  a 
familiar  of  his  boarding-house  piqued  his  curiosity  not  the 
slightest  was  only  too  evident.  He  bowed,  his  eyes  return 
ing  from  steak  to  book. 

"  I  am  obliged  to  you  for  getting  my  supper." 

If  he  had  said, "Will  you  kindly  go?"  his  meaning  could 
hardly  have  been  more  unmistakable.  However,  Mrs. 
Paynter's  resolute  agent  held  her  ground.  Taking  advan 
tage  of  his  gross  absorption,  she  now  looked  the  delin 
quent  boarder  over  with  some  care.  At  first  glance  Mr. 
Queed  looked  as  if  he  might  have  been  born  in  a  library, 
where  he  had  unaspiringly  settled  down.  To  support  this 
impression  there  were  his  pallid  complexion  and  enormous 
round  spectacles;  his  dusty  air  of  premature  age;  his  gen 
eral  effect  of  dried-up  detachment  from  his  environment. 
One  noted,  too,  the  tousled  mass  of  nondescript  hair,  which 
he  wore  about  a  month  too  long ;  the  necktie-band  triumph 
ing  over  the  collar  in  the  back;  the  collar  itself,  which  had  a 
kind  of  celluloid  look  and  shone  with  a  blue  unwholesome 
sheen  under  the  gas-light.  On  the  other  hand  there  was  the 
undeniably  trim  cut  of  the  face,  which  gave  an  unexpected 
and  contradictory  air  of  briskness.  The  nose  was  bold ;  the 
long  straight  mouth  might  have  belonged  to  a  man  of  ac 
tion.  Probably  the  great  spectacles  were  the  turning-point 
in  the  man's  whole  effect.  You  felt  that  if  you  could  get  your 
hands  on  him  long  enough  to  pull  those  off,  and  cut  his  hair, 
you  might  have  an  individual  who  would  not  so  surely  have 
been  christened  the  little  Doctor. 

These  details  the  agent  gathered  at  her  leisure.  Mean 
time  here  was  the  situation,  stark  and  plain;  and  she,  and 
she  alone,  must  handle  it.  She  must  tell  this  young  man, 


28  QUEED 

so  frankly  engrossed  in  his  mental  and  material  food,  which 
he  ate  by  his  watch,  that  he  must  fork  over  four  times 
seven-fifty  or  vacate  the  premises.  .  .  .  Yes,  but  how  to  do 
it?  He  could  not  be  much  older  than  she  herself,  but  his 
manner  was  the  most  impervious,  the  most  impossible 
that  she  had  ever  seen.  "I'm  grim  and  I'm  resolute,"  she 
said  over  to  herself;  but  the  splendid  defiance  of  the  motto 
failed  to  quicken  her  blood.  Not  even  the  recollection  of  the 
month's  sponge  for  board  and  the  house-rent  due  next  week 
spurred  her  to  action.  Then  she  thought  of  Fifi,  whom  Mr. 
Queed  had  packed  off  sobbing  for  his  good  pleasure,  and  her 
resolution  hardened. 

"  I  'm  afraid  I  must  interrupt  your  reading  for  a  moment," 
she  said  quietly.  "There  is  something  I  want  to  say.  .  .  ." 

He  glanced  up  for  the  second  time.  There  was  surprise 
and  some  vexation  in  the  eyes  behind  his  circular  glasses, 
but  no  sign  of  any  interest. 

"Well?" 

"When  my  aunt  introduced  you  to  me  just  now  she  did 
not  —  did  not  identify  me  as  she  should  — " 

"Really,  does  it  make  any  difference?" 

"Yes,  I  think  it  does.  You  see,  I  am  not  only  her  niece, 
but  her  business  woman,  her  agent,  as  well.  She  is  n't  very 
good  at  business,  but  still  she  has  a  good  deal  of  it  to  be 
done.  She  runs  this  boarding-place,  and  people  of  various 
kinds  come  to  her  and  she  takes  them  into  her  house.  Many 
of  these  people  are  entirely  unknown  to  her.  In  this  way 
trouble  sometimes  arises.  For  instance  people  come  now  and 
then  who  —  how  shall  I  put  it?  —  are  very  reserved  about 
making  their  board-payments.  My  aunt  hardly  knows  how 
to  deal  with  them  — " 

He  interrupted  her  with  a  gesture  and  a  glance  at  his 
watch.  "It  always  seems  to  me  an  unnecessary  waste  of 
time  not  to  be  direct.  You  have  called  to  collect  my  arrear 
age  for  board?" 

"Well,  yes.    I  have." 

"Please  tell  your  aunt  that  when  I  told  her  to  give  herself 


QUEED  29 

no  concern  about  that  matter,  I  exactly  meant  what  I  said. 
To-night  I  received  funds  through  the  mail;  the  sum, 
twenty  dollars.  Your  aunt,"  said  he,  obviously  ready  to 
return  to  his  reading  matter,  "shall  have  it  all." 

But  Sharlee  had  heard  delinquent  young  men  talk  like 
that  before,  and  her  business  platform  in  these  cases  was 
to  be  introduced  to  their  funds  direct. 

"That  would  cut  down  the  account  nicely,"  said  she, 
looking  at  him  pleasantly,  but  a  shade  too  hard  to  imply 
a  beautiful  trust.  She  went  on  much  like  the  firm  young 
lady  enumerators  who  take  the  census:  "By  the  way  —  let 
me  ask:  Have  you  any  regular  business  or  occupation?" 

"Not,  I  suppose,  in  the  sense  in  which  you  mean  the 
interrogation." 

"Perhaps  you  have  friends  in  the  city,  who  — " 

" Friends !  Here !  Good  Lord  —  no!11  said  he,  with  exas 
perated  vehemence. 

"I  gather,"  was  surprised  from  her,  "that  you  do  not 
wish  —  " 

"They  are  the  last  thing  in  the  world  that  I  desire.  My 
experience  in  that  direction  in  New  York  quite  sufficed  me, 
I  assure  you.  I  came  here,"  said  he,  with  rather  too  blunt 
an  implication,  "to  be  let  alone." 

"I  was  thinking  of  references,  you  know.  You  have 
friends  in  New  York,  then?" 

"Yes,  I  have  two.  But  I  doubt  if  you  would  regard  them 
as  serviceable  for  references.  The  best  of  them  is  only  a 
policeman ;  the  other  is  a  yeggman  by  trade  —  his  brother, 
by  the  way." 

She  was  silent  a  moment,  wondering  if  he  were  telling 
the  truth,  and  deciding  what  to  say  next.  The  young  man 
used  the  silence  to  bolt  his  coffee  at  a  gulp  and  go  hurriedly 
but  deeply  into  the  preserves. 

"My  aunt  will  be  glad  that  you  can  make  a  remittance 
to-night.  I  will  take  it  to  her  for  you  with  pleasure." 

"Oh!— All  right." 

He  put  his  hand  into  his  outer  breast-pocket,  pulled  out 


30  QUEED 

an  envelope,  and  absently  pitched  it  across  the  table.  She 
looked  at  it  and  saw  that  it  was  postmarked  the  city  and 
bore  a  typewritten  address. 

"Am  I  to  open  this?" 

"Oh,  as  you  like,"  said  he,  and,  removing  the  spoon,  turned 
a  page. 

The  agent  picked  up  the  envelope  with  anticipations  of 
helpful  clues.  It  was  her  business  to  find  out  everything 
that  she  could  about  Mr.  Queed.  A  determinedly  moneyless, 
friendless,  and  vocationless  young  man  could  not  daily  stretch 
his  limbs  under  her  aunt's  table  and  retain  the  Third  Hall 
Back  against  more  compensatory  guests.  But  the  letter 
proved  a  grievous  disappointment  to  her.  Inside  was  a 
folded  sheet  of  cheap  white  paper,  apparently  torn  from  a 
pad.  Inside  the  sheet  was  a  new  twenty-dollar  bill.  That  was 
all.  Apart  from  the  address,  there  was  no  writing  anywhere. 

Yet  the  crisp  greenback,  incognito  though  it  came,  indu 
bitably  suggested  that  Mr.  Queed  was  not  an  entire  stranger 
to  the  science  of  money-making. 

"Ah,"  said  the  agent,  insinuatingly,  "  evidently  you  have 
so  me  occupation,  after  all — of  —  of  a  productive  sort.  .  .  ." 

He  looked  up  again  with  that  same  air  of  vexed  surprise, 
as  much  as  to  say:  "What!  You  still  hanging  around!" 

"I  don't  follow  you,  I  fear." 

"  I  assume  that  this  money  comes  to  you  in  payment  for 
some  —  work  you  have  done  — " 

"It  is  an  assumption,  certainly." 

"You  can  appreciate,  perhaps,  that  I  am  not  idly  inquisi 
tive.  I  shouldn't—" 

"What  is  it  that  you  wish  to  know?" 

"As  to  this  money  — " 

"Really,  you  know  as  much  about  it  as  I  do.  It  came 
exactly  as  I  handed  it  to  you :  the  envelope,  the  blank  paper, 
and  the  bill." 

"But  you  know,  of  course,  where  it  comes  from?" 

"  I  can't  say  I  do.  Evidently,"  said  Mr.  Queed,  "  it  is 
intended  as  a  gift." 


QUEED  31 

"Then  —  perhaps  you  have  a  good  friend  here  after  all? 
Some  one  who  has  guessed  — " 

"I  think  I  told  you  that  I  have  but  two  friends,  and  I 
know  for  a  certainty  that  they  are  both  in  New  York.  Be 
sides,  neither  of  them  would  give  me  twenty  dollars." 

"But  —  but  —  but,"  said  the  girl,  laughing  through  her 
utter  bewilderment  —  "are  n't  you  interested  to  know  who 
did  give  it  to  you  ?  Are  n't  you  curious  ?  I  assure  you  that  in 
this  city  it 's  not  a  bit  usual  to  get  money  through  the  mails 
from  anonymous  admirers  — " 

"  Nor  did  I  say  that  this  was  a  usual  case.  I  told  you  that 
I  did  n't  know  who  sent  me  this." 

"Exactly—" 

"But  I  have  an  idea.   I  think  my  father  sent  it." 

"Oh!  Your  father.  ..." 

So  he  had  a  father,  an  eccentric  but  well-to-do  father, 
who,  though  not  a  friend,  yet  sent  in  twenty  dollars  now 
and  then  to  relieve  his  son's  necessities.  Sharlee  felt  her 
heart  rising. 

"Don't  think  me  merely  prying.  You  see  I  am  naturally 
interested  in  the  question  of  whether  you  —  will  find  your 
self  able  to  stay  on  here  — " 

"You  refer  to  my  ability  to  make  my  board  pay 
ments?" 

"Yes." 

Throughout  this  dialogue,  Mr.  Queed  had  been  eating, 
steadily  and  effectively.  Now  he  slid  his  knife  and  fork  into 
place  with  a  pained  glance  at  his  watch ;  and  simultaneously 
a  change  came  over  his  face,  a  kind  of  tightening,  shot 
through  with  Christian  fortitude,  which  plainly  advertised 
an  unwelcome  resolution. 

"My  supper  allowance  of  time,"  he  began  warningly, 
"is  practically  up.  However,  I  suppose  the  definite  settle 
ment  of  this  board  question  cannot  be  postponed  further.  I 
must  not  leave  you  under  any  misapprehensions.  If  this 
money  came  from  my  father,  it  is  the  first  I  ever  had  from 
him  in  my  life.  Whether  I  am  to  get  any  more  from  him 


32  QUEED 

is  problematical,  to  say  the  least.  Due  consideration  must 
be  given  the  fact  that  he  and  I  have  never  met." 

"Oh!  ...  Does — he  live  here,  in  the  city?" 

"I  have  some  reason  to  believe  that  he  does.  It  is  in 
deed,"  Mr.  Queed  set  forth  to  his  landlady's  agent,  "be 
cause  of  that  belief  that  I  have  come  here.  I  have  assumed, 
with  good  grounds,  that  he  would  promptly  make  himself 
known  to  me,  take  charge  of  things,  and  pay  my  board; 
but  though  I  have  been  here  nearly  a  month,  he  has  so  far 
made  not  the  slightest  move  in  that  direction,  unless  we 
count  this  letter.  Possibly  he  leaves  it  to  me  to  find  him, 
but  I,  on  my  part,  have  no  time  to  spare  for  any  such  un 
dertaking.  I  make  the  situation  clear  to  you?  Under  the 
circumstances  I  cannot  promise  you  a  steady  revenue  from 
my  father.  On  the  other  hand,  for  all  that  I  know,  it  may 
be  his  plan  to  send  me  money  regularly  after  this." 

There  was  a  brief  pause.  "  But  —  apart  from  the  money 
consideration  —  have  you  no  interest  in  finding  him?" 

"Oh  —  if  that  is  all  one  asks!  But  it  happens  not  to  be 
a  mere  question  of  my  personal  whim.  Possibly  you  can 
appreciate  the  fact  that  finding  a  father  is  a  tremendous 
task  when  you  have  no  idea  where  he  lives,  or  what  he  looks 
like,  or  what  name  he  may  be  using.  My  time  is  wholly 
absorbed  by  my  own  work.  I  have  none  to  give  to  a  wild- 
goose  chase  such  as  that,  on  the  mere  chance  that,  if  found, 
he  would  agree  to  pay  my  board  for  the  future." 

If  he  had  been  less  in  earnest  he  would  have  been  gro 
tesque.  As  it  was,  Sharlee  was  by  no  means  sure  that  he 
escaped  it;  and  she  could  not  keep  a  controversial  note  out 
of  her  voice  as  she  said :  — 

"Yours  must  be  a  very  great  work  to  make  you  view  the 
finding  of  your  father  in  that  way." 

"The  greatest  in  the  world,"  he  answered,  drily.  "I  may 
call  it,  loosely,  evolutionary  sociology." 

She  was  so  silent  after  this,  and  her  expression  was  so 
peculiar,  that  he  concluded  that  his  words  conveyed  nothing 
to  her. 


QUEED  33 

"The  science,"  he  added  kindly,  "which  treats  of  the 
origin,  nature,  and  history  of  human  society;  analyzes  the 
relations  of  men  in  organized  communities;  formulates  the 
law  or  laws  of  social  progress  and  permanence ;  and  correctly 
applies  these  laws  to  the  evolutionary  development  of  human 
civilization." 

"I  am  familiar  with  the  terms.  And  your  ambition  is  to 
become  a  great  evolutionary  sociologist?" 

He  smiled  faintly.    "To  become  one?" 

"Oh!  Then  you  are  one  already?" 

For  answer,  Mr.  Queed  dipped  his  hand  into  his  inner 
pocket,  produced  a  large  wallet,  and  from  a  mass  of  papers 
selected  a  second  envelope. 

"You  mention  references.  Possibly  these  will  impress 
you  as  even  better  than  friends." 

Sharlee,  seated  on  the  arm  of  Major  Brooke's  chair,  ran 
through  the  clippings:  two  advertisements  of  a  well-known 
"heavy"  review  announcing  articles  by  Mr.  Queed;  a 
table  of  contents  torn  from  a  year-old  number  of  the  Po 
litical  Science  Quarterly  to  the  same  effect;  an  editorial 
from  a  New  York  newspaper  commenting  on  one  of  these 
articles  and  speaking  laudatorily  of  its  author;  a  private 
letter  from  the  editor  of  the  "heavy"  urging  Mr.  Queed  to 
write  another  article  on  a  specified  subject,  "Sociology  and 
Socialism." 

To  Sharlee  the  exhibit  seemed  surprisingly  formidable, 
but  the  wonder  in  her  eyes  was  not  at  that.  Her  marvel  was 
for  the  fact  that  the  man  who  was  capable  of  so  cruelly 
elbowing  little  Fifi  out  of  his  way  should  be  counted  a 
follower  of  the  tenderest  and  most  human  of  sciences. 

"They  impress  me,"  she  said,  returning  his  envelope; 
"but  not  as  better  than  friends." 

"Ah?  A  matter  of  taste.   Now—" 

"I  had  always  supposed,"  continued  the  girl,  looking  at 
him,  "that  sociology  had  a  close  relation  with  life  —  in  fact, 
that  it  was  based  on  a  conscious  recognition  of  —  the  brother 
hood  of  man." 


34  QUEED 

"Your  supposition  is  doubtless  sound,  though  you  express 
it  so  loosely." 

"Yet  you  feel  that  the  sociologist  has  no  such  relation?" 

He  glanced  up  sharply.  At  the  subtly  hostile  look  in  her 
eyes,  his  expression  became,  for  the  first  time,  a  little  inter 
ested. 

"How  do  you  deduce  that?" 

"Oh!  .  .  .  It  is  loose,  if  you  like  —  but  I  deduce  it  from 
what  you  have  said  —  and  implied  —  about  your  father 
and  —  having  friends." 

But  what  she  thought  of,  most  of  all,  was  the  case  of 
Fifi. 

She  stood  across  the  table,  facing  him,  looking  down  at 
him;  and  there  was  a  faintly  heightened  color  in  her  cheeks. 
Her  eyes  were  the  clearest  lapis  lazuli,  heavily  fringed  with 
lashes  which  were  blacker  than  Egypt's  night.  Her  chin 
was  finely  and  strongly  cut;  almost  a  masculine  chin,  but 
unmasculinely  softened  by  the  sweetness  of  her  mouth. 

Mr.  Queed  eyed  her  with  some  impatience  through  his 
round  spectacles. 

"You  apparently  jumble  together  the  theory  and  what 
you  take  to  be  the  application  of  a  science  in  the  attempt 
to  make  an  impossible  unit.  Hence  your  curious  confusion. 
Theory  and  application  are  as  totally  distinct  as  the  poles. 
The  few  must  discover  for  the  many  to  use.  My  own  task — 
since  the  matter  appears  to  interest  you  —  is  to  work  out  the 
laws  of  human  society  for  those  who  come  after  to  practice 
and  apply." 

"And  suppose  those  who  come  after  feel  the  same  unwill 
ingness  to  practice  and  apply  that  you,  let  us  say,  feel?" 

"It  becomes  the  business  of  government  to  persuade 
them." 

"And  if  government  shirks  also?  What  is  government 
but  the  common  expression  of  masses  of  individuals  very 
much  like  yourself?" 

"There  you  return,  you  see,  to  your  fundamental  error. 
There  are  very  few  individuals  in  the  least  like  me.  I  hap- 


QUEED  35 

pen  to  be  writing  a  book  of  great  importance,  not  to  myself 
merely,  but  to  posterity.  If  I  fail  to  finish  my  book,  if  I  am 
delayed  in  finishing  it,  I  can  hardly  doubt  that  the  world 
will  be  the  loser.  This  is  not  a  task  like  organizing  a  pro 
longed  search  for  one's  father,  or  dawdling  with  friends,  which 
a  million  men  can  do  equally  well.  I  alone  can  write  my 
book.  Perhaps  you  now  grasp  my  duty  of  concentrating  all 
my  time  and  energy  on  this  single  work  and  ruthlessly 
eliminating  whatever  interferes  with  it." 

The  girl  found  his  incredible  egoism  at  once  amusing  and 
extremely  exasperating. 

"Have  you  ever  thought,"  she  asked,  "that  thousands 
of  other  self-absorbed  men  have  considered  their  own 
particular  work  of  supreme  importance,  and  that  most  of 
them  have  been  —  mistaken?" 

"Really  I  have  nothing  to  do  with  other  men's  mistakes. 
I  am  responsible  only  for  my  own." 

"And  that  is  why  it  is  a  temptation  to  suggest  that  con 
ceivably  you  had  made  one  here." 

"But  you  find  difficulty  in  suggesting  such  a  thought 
convincingly?  That  is  because  I  have  not  conceivably  made 
any  such  mistake.  A  Harvey  must  discover  the  theory  of 
the  circulation  of  the  blood ;  it  is  the  business  of  lesser  men 
to  apply  the  discovery  to  practical  ends.  It  takes  a  Whitney 
to  invent  the  cotton  gin,  but  the  dullest  negro  roustabout 
can  operate  it.  Why  multiply  illustrations  of  a  truism? 
Theory,  you  perceive,  calls  for  other  and  higher  gifts  than  ap 
plication.  The  man  who  can  formulate  the  eternal  laws  of 
social  evolution  can  safely  leave  it  to  others  to  put  his  laws 
into  practice." 

Sharlee  gazed  at  him  in  silence,  and  he  returned  her  gaze, 
his  face  wearing  a  look  of  the  rankest  complacence  that  she 
had  ever  seen  upon  a  human  countenance.  But  all  at  once 
his  eyes  fell  upon  his  watch,  and  his  brow  clouded. 

"Meantime,"  he  went  on  abruptly,  "there  remains  the 
question  of  my  board." 

"Yes.  ...  Do   I   understand  that  you  —  derive  your 


36  QUEED 

living  from  these  social  laws  that  you  write  up  for  others 
to  practice?" 

"Oh,  no  —  impossible!  There  is  no  living  to  be  made 
there.  When  my  book  comes  out  there  may  be  a  different 
story,  but  that  is  two  years  and  ten  months  off.  Every 
minute  taken  from  it  for  the  making  of  money  is,  as  you 
may  now  understand,  decidedly  unfortunate.  Still,"  he 
added  depressedly,  "I  must  arrange  to  earn  something,  I 
suppose,  since  my  father's  assistance  is  so  problematical.  I 
worked  for  money  in  New  York,  for  awhile." 

"Oh  — did  you?" 

"Yes,  I  helped  a  lady  write  a  thesaurus." 

"Oh.  .  .  ." 

"  It  was  a  mere  fad  with  her.  I  virtually  wrote  the  work 
for  her  and  charged  her  five  dollars  an  hour."  He  looked 
at  her  narrowly.  "  Do  you  happen  to  know  of  any  one  here 
who  wants  work  of  that  sort  done?" 

The  agent  did  not  answer.  By  a  series  of  covert  glances 
she  had  been  trying  to  learn,  upside  down,  what  it  was  that 
Mr.  Queed  was  reading.  "Sociology,"  she  had  easily  picked 
out,  but  the  chapter  heading,  on  the  opposite  page,  was  more 
troublesome,  and,  deeply  absorbed,  she  had  now  just  suc 
ceeded  in  deciphering  it.  The  particular  division  of  his  sub 
ject  in  which  Mr.  Queed  was  so  much  engrossed  was  called 
"Man's  Duty  to  His  Neighbors." 

Struck  by  the  silence,  Sharlee  looked  up  with  a  small 
start,  and  the  faintest  possible  blush.  "I  beg  your  par 
don?" 

"I  asked  if  you  knew  of  any  lady  here,  a  wealthy  one, 
who  would  like  to  write  a  thesaurus  as  a  fad." 

The  girl  was  obliged  to  admit  that,  at  the  moment,  she 
could  think  of  no  such  person.  But  her  mind  fastened  at 
once  on  the  vulgar,  hopeful  fact  that  the  unsocial  sociol- 
ologist  wanted  a  job. 

"That's  unfortunate,"  said  Mr.  Queed.  "I  suppose  I 
must  accept  a  little  regular,  very  remunerative  work  —  to 
settle  this  board  question  once  and  for  all.  An  hour  or  two 


QUEED  37 

a  day,  at  most.  However,  it  is  not  easy  to  lay  one's  hand 
on  such  work  in  a  strange  city." 

"Perhaps,"  said  Miss  Weyland  slowly,  "I  can  help  you." 

"I'm  sure  I  hope  so,"  said  he  with  another  flying  glance 
at  his  watch.  "That  is  what  I  have  been  approaching  for 
seven  minutes." 

"Don't  you  always  find  it  an  unnecessary  waste  of  time 
not  to  be  direct?" 

He  sat,  slightly  frowning,  impatiently  fingering  the  pages 
of  his  book.  The  hit  bounded  off  him  like  a  rubber  ball 
thrown  against  the  Great  Wall  of  China. 

' '  Well  ?  "  he  demanded .   ' '  What  have  you  to  propose  ? ' ' 

The  agent  sat  down  in  a  chair  across  the  table,  William 
Klinker's  chair,  and  rested  her  chin  upon  her  shapely  little 
hand.  The  other  shapely  little  hand  toyed  with  the  crisp 
twenty  dollar  bill,  employing  it  to  trace  geometric  designs 
upon  the  colored  table-cloth.  Mr.  Queed  had  occasion  to 
consult  his  watch  again  before  she  raised  her  head. 

"I  propose,"  she  said,  "that  you  apply  for  some  special 
editorial  work  on  the  Post" 

"The  Post?  The  Post?  The  morning  newspaper  here?" 

"One  of  them." 

He  laughed,  actually  laughed.  It  was  a  curious,  slow 
laugh,  betraying  that  the  muscles  which  accomplished  it 
were  flabby  for  want  of  exercise. 

"And  who  writes  the  editorials  on  the  Post  now?" 

"A  gentleman  named  Colonel  Cowles  — " 

"Ah!  His  articles  on  taxation  read  as  if  they  might  have 
been  written  by  a  military  man.  I  happened  to  read  one  the 
day  before  yesterday.  It  was  most  amusing  — " 

"Excuse  me.   Colonel  Cowles  is  a  friend  of  mine  — " 

"What  has  that  got  to  do  with  his  political  economy? 
If  he  is  your  friend,  then  I  should  say  that  you  have  a  most 
amusing  friend." 

Sharlee  rose,  decidedly  irritated.  "Well  —  that  is  my 
suggestion.  I  believe  you  will  find  it  worth  thinking  over, 
Good-night." 


38  QUEED 

"The  Post  pays  its  contributors  well,  I  suppose?" 

"That  you  would  have  to  take  up  with  its  owners." 

"Clearly  the  paper  needs  the  services  of  an  expert  — 
though,  of  course,  I  could  not  give  it  much  time,  only  enough 
to  pay  for  my  keep.  The  suggestion  is  not  a  bad  one  —  not 
at  all.  As  to  applying,  as  you  call  it,  is  this  amiable  Colonel 
Cowles  the  person  to  be  seen?" 

"Yes.  No  —  wait  a  minute."  She  had  halted  in  her  pro 
gress  to  the  door;  her  mind's  eye  conjured  up  a  probable 
interview  between  the  Colonel  and  the  scientist,  and  she 
hardly  had  the  heart  to  let  it  go  at  that.  Moreover,  she 
earnestly  wished,  for  Mrs.  Paynter's  reasons,  that  the  ten 
ant  of  the  third  hall  back  should  become  associated  with 
the  pay-envelope  system  of  the  city.  "Listen,"  she  went 
on.  "I  know  one  of  the  directors  of  the  Post,  and  shall  be 
glad  to  speak  to  him  in  your  behalf.  Then,  if  there  is  an 
opening,  I'll  send  you,  through  my  aunt,  a  card  of  intro 
duction  to  him  and  you  can  go  to  see  him." 

"Could  n't  he  come  to  see  me?  I  .am  enormously 
busy." 

"So  is  he.   I  doubt  if  you  could  expect  him  to  — " 

"H'm.  Very  well.  I  am  obliged  to  you  for  your  sugges 
tion.  Of  course  I  shall  take  no  step  in  the  matter  until  I 
hear  from  you." 

"Good-evening,"  said  the  agent,  icily. 

He  bowed  slightly  in  answer  to  the  salute,  uttering  no 
further  word ;  for  him  the  interview  ended  right  there,  cleanly 
and  satisfactorily.  From  the  door  the  girl  glanced  back.  Mr. 
Queed  had  drawn  his  heavy  book  before  him,  pencil  in  hand, 
and  was  once  more  engrossed  in  the  study  and  annotation 
of  "Man's  Duty  to  His  Neighbors." 

In  the  hall  Sharlee  met  Fifi,  who  was  tipping  toward  the 
dining-room  to  discover,  by  the  frank  method  of  ear  and 
keyhole,  how  the  grim  and  resolute  collector  was  faring. 

"You're  still  alive,  Sharlee!  Any  luck?" 

"The  finest  in  the  world,  darling!  Twenty  dollars  in  the 
hand  and  a  remunerative  job  for  him  in  the  bush." 


QUEED  39 

Fifi  did  a  few  steps  of  a  minuet.  " Hooray!"  said  she  in 
her  weak  little  voice. 

Sharlee  put  her  arms  around  the  child's  neck  and  said  in 
her  ear:  "Fifi,  be  very  gentle  with  that  young  man.  He's 
the  most  pitiful  little  creature  I  ever  saw." 

"Why,"  said  Fifi,  "I  don't  think  he  feels  that  way  at 
all—" 

"Don't  you  see  that's  just  what  makes  him  so  infinitely 
pathetic?  He's  the  saddest  little  man  in  the  world,  and  it 
has  never  dawned  on  him." 

It  was  not  till  some  hours  later,  when  she  was  making 
ready  for  bed  in  her  own  room,  that  it  occurred  to  Sharlee 
that  there  was  something  odd  in  this  advice  to  her  little 
cousin.  For  she  had  started  out  with  the  intention  to  teli 
Mr.  Queed  that  he  must  be  very  gentle  with  Fifi. 


IV 

Relating  how  Two  Stars  in  their  Courses  fought  for  Mr. 
Queed ;  and  how  he  accepted  Remunerative  Employment 
under  Colonel  Cowles,  the  Military  Political  Economist. 

THE  stars  in  their  courses  fought  for  Mr.  Queed  in  those 
days.  Somebody  had  to  fight  for  him,  it  seemed, 
since  he  was  so  little  equipped  to  fight  for  himself, 
and  the  stars  kindly  undertook  the  assignment.  Not  merely 
had  he  attracted  the  militant  services  of  the  bright  little  ce 
lestial  body  whose  earthly  agent  was  Miss  Charlotte  Lee  Wey- 
land ;  but  this  little  body  chanced  to  be  one  of  a  system  or 
galaxy,  associated  with  and  exercising  a  certain  power,  akin 
to  gravitation,  over  that  strong  and  steady  planet  known 
among  men  as  Charles  Gardiner  West.  And  the  very  next 
day,  tfie  back  of  the  morning's  mail  being  broken,  the  little 
star  used  some  of  its  power  to  draw  the  great  planet  to  the 
telephone,  while  feeling,  in  a  most  unstellar  way,  that  it  was 
a  decidedly  cheeky  thing  to  do.  However,  nothing  could 
have  exceeded  the  charming  radiance  of  Planet  West,  and  it 
was  he  himself  who  introduced  the  topic  of  Mr.  Queed,  by 
inquiring,  in  mundane  language,  whether  or  not  he  had  been 
fired. 

"  No ! "  laughed  the  star.  "  Instead  of  firing  him,  I  'm  now 
bent  on  hiring  him.  Oh,  you'd  better  not  laugh!  It's  to  you 
I  want  to  hire  him!" 

But  at  that  the  shining  Planet  laughed  the  more. 

"What  have  I  done  to  be  worthy  of  this  distinction?  Also, 
what  can  I  do  with  him?  To  paraphrase  his  own  inimitable 
remark  about  your  dog,  what  is  the  object  of  a  man  like  that? 
What  is  he  for?" 

Sharlee  dilated  on  the  renown  of  Mr.  Queed  as  a  writer 
upon  abstruse  themes.  Mr.  West  was  not  merely  agreeable; 


QUEBD  41 

he  was  interested.  It  seemed  that  at  the  very  last  meeting  of 
the  Post  directors  —  to  which  body  Mr.  West  had  been 
elected  at  the  stockholders'  meeting  last  June  —  it  had  been 
decided  that  Colonel  Cowles  should  have  a  little  help  in  the 
editorial  department.  The  work  was  growing;  the  Colonel 
was  ageing.  The  point  had  been  to  find  the  help.  Who  knew 
but  what  this  little  highbrow  was  the  very  man  they  were 
looking  for? 

"  I  '11  call  on  him  —  at  your  aunt's,  shall  I?  —  to-day  if  I 
can.  Why,  not  a  bit  of  it!  The  thanks  are  quite  the  other 
way.  He  may  turn  out  another  Charles  A.  Dana,  cleverly 
disguised.  When  are  you  going  to  have  another  half-holiday 
up  there?" 

Sharlee  left  the  telephone  thinking  that  Mr.  West  was 
quite  the  nicest  man  she  knew.  Ninety-nine  men  out  of  a 
hundred,  in  his  position,  would  have  said,  "  Send  him  to  see 
me."  Mr.  West  had  said,  "  I  '11  call  on  him  at  your  aunt's," 
and  had  absolutely  refused  to  pose  as  the  gracious  dispenser 
of  patronage.  However,  a  great  many  people  shared  Shar- 
lee's  opinion  of  Charles  Gardiner  West.  One  of  them  walked 
into  his  office  at  that  very  moment,  also  petitioning  for 
something,  and  West  received  him  with  just  that  same  un 
affected  pleasantness  of  manner  which  everybody  found  so 
agreeable.  But  this  one's  business,  as  it  happened,  com 
pletely  knocked  from  Mr.  West's  head  the  matter  of  Mr. 
Queed.  In  fact,  he  never  gave  it  another  thought.  The  fol 
lowing  night  he  went  to  New  York  with  a  little  party  of 
friends,  chiefly  on  pleasure  bent;  and,  having  no  particularly 
frugal  mind,  permitted  himself  a  very  happy  day  or  so  in  the 
metropolis.  Hence  it  happened  that  Sharlee,  learning  from 
her  aunt  that  no  Post  directors  had  called  forcing  remunera 
tive  work  on  Mr.  Queed,  made  it  convenient,  about  five  days 
after  the  telephone  conversation,  to  meet  Mr.  West  upon  the 
street,  quite  by  accident.  Any  girl  can  tell  you  how  it  is  done. 

"Oh,  by  the  way,"  she  said  in  the  most  casual  way,  "shall 
I  send  my  little  Doctor  Queed  to  call  upon  you  some  day?  " 

West  was  agreeably  contrite ;  abused  himself  for  a  shiftless 


42  QUEED 

lackwit  who  was  slated  for  an  unwept  grave;  promised  to 
call  that  very  day;  and,  making  a  memorandum  the  instant 
he  got  back  to  the  office,  this  time  did  not  fail  to  keep  his 
word. 

Not  that  Mr.  Queed  had  been  inconvenienced  by  the  little 
delay.  The  minute  after  his  landlady's  agent  left  him,  he  had 
become  immersed  in  that  great  work  of  his,  and  there  by  day 
and  night,  he  had  remained.  Having  turned  over  to  the  agent 
the  full  responsibility  for  finding  work  for  him,  he  no  longer 
had  to  bother  his  head  about  it.  The  whole  matter  dropped 
gloriously  from  his  mind;  he  read,  wrote,  and  avoided  prac 
ticing  sociology  with  tremendous  industry;  and  thus  he 
might  have  gone  on  for  no  one  knows  how  long  had  there  not, 
at  five  o'clock  on  the  fifth  day,  come  a  knock  upon  his  door. 

"Well?"  he  called,  annoyed. 

Emma  came  in  with  a  card.  The  name,  at  which  the  young 
man  barely  glanced,  conveyed  nothing  to  him. 

"Well?  What  does  he  want?" 

Emma  did  not  know. 

"Oh!  "  said  Mr.  Queed,  irritably — "tell  him  to  come  up, 
if  he  must." 

The  Post  director  came  up  —  two  flights ;  he  knocked ;  was 
curtly  bidden  to  enter;  did  so. 

He  stepped  into  one  of  the  smallest  rooms  he  had  ever 
seen  in  his  life ;  about  nine  by  five-and-a-half,  he  thought.  A 
tiny  single  bed  ran  along  one  side  of  it;  jammed  against  the 
foot  of  the  bed  was  a  tiny  table.  A  tiny  chair  stood  at  the 
table ;  behind  the  chair  stood  a  tiny  bureau ;  beside  the  bu 
reau,  the  tiniest  little  iron  wash-stand  in  the  world.  In  the 
chair  sat  a  man,  not  tiny,  indeed,  but  certainly  nobody's 
prize  giant.  He  sat  in  a  kind  of  whirling  tempest  of  books 
and  papers,  and  he  rode  absorbedly  in  the  whirlwind  and 
majestically  directed  the  storm. 

West  was  intensely  interested.  "Mr.  Queed?"  he  asked, 
from  just  inside  the  door. 

"Yes, "  said  the  other,  not  looking  up.  "  What  can  I  do  for 
you?  " 


QUEED  43 

West  burst  out  laughing ;  he  could  n't  help  it. 

"Maybe  you  can  do  a  great  deal,  Mr.  Queed.  On  the 
other  hand  maybe  I  can  do  some  little  trifle  for  you.  Which 
leg  the  boot  is  on  nobody  on  earth  can  say  at  this  juncture. 
I  have  ventured  to  call,"  said  he,  "as  an  ambassador  from 
the  morning  Post  of  this  city." 

"The  Post?" 

The  name  instantly  started  Queed's  memory  to  working; 
he  recalled  something  about  the  Post — as  yet,  so  it  hap 
pened,  only  the  copy  of  it  he  had  read ;  and  he  turned  and 
looked  around  with  slow  professorial  amusement  kindling 
in  his  eyes. 

"Ah!"  said  he.  "Possibly  you  are  Colonel  Cowles,  the 
military  political  economist?  " 

West  was  more  amused  than  ever.  "  No,"  said  he,  "on  the 
contrary,  West  is  the  name,  C.  G.  West  —  to  correspond, 
you  know,  with  the  one  on  that  card  you  have  in  your  hand. 
I  '11  sit  down  here  on  the  bed — shall  I  ?  —  so  that  we  can  talk 
more  comfortably.  Sitting  does  help  the  flow  of  ideas  so 
remarkably,  don't  you  find?  I  am  trespassing  on  your  time," 
said  he,  "at  the  suggestion  of — an  acquaintance  of  yours, 
who  has  been  telling  me  great  things  about  your  work." 

Queed  looked  completely  puzzled. 

"  The  Post,  Mr.  Queed,"  went  on  West  agreeably,  "is  al 
ways  looking  for  men  who  can  do  exceptional  work.  There 
fore,  I  have  come  to  consider  with  you  whether  we  might 
not  make  an  arrangement  to  our  mutual  advantage." 

At  that  the  whole  thing  came  back  to  the  young  man.  He 
had  agreed  to  take  light  remunerative  work  to  pay  his  board, 
and  now  the  day  of  reckoning  was  at  hand.  His  heart  grew 
heavy  within  him. 

"Well,"  said  he,  exactly  as  he  had  said  to  the  agent, 
"what  have  you  to  propose?  " 

"I  thought  of  proposing,  first,  that  you  give  me  some  idea 
of  what  you  have  done  and  can  do  on  lines  useful  for  a  daily 
newspaper.  How  does  that  method  of  procedure  strike 
you?  " 


44  QUEED 

Queed  produced  his  celebrated  envelope  of  clippings.  Also 
he  hunted  up  one  or  two  stray  cuttings  which  proved  to  be 
editorials  he  had  written  on  assignment,  for  a  New  York 
newspaper.  West  ran  through  them  with  intelligent  quick 
ness. 

"I  say!  These  are  rather  fine,  you  know.  This  article 
on  the  income  tax  now  —  just  right!  —  just  the  sort  of 
thing!" 

Queed  sat  with  his  hand  clamped  on  his  head,  which  was 
aching  rather  badly,  as  indeed  it  did  about  three  fourths 
of  the  time. 

"Oh,  yes,"  he  said  wearily. 

"I  take  off  my  hat  to  you!"  added  West  presently. 
"  You  're  rather  out  of  my  depth  here,  but  at  least  I  know 
enough  political  economy  to  know  what  is  good." 

He  looked  at  Queed,  smiling,  very  good-humored  and 
gay,  and  Queed  looked  back  at  him,  not  very  good-humored 
and  anything  but  gay.  Doubtless  it  would  have  surprised 
the  young  Doctor  very  much  to  know  that  West  was  feeling 
sorry  for  him  just  then,  for  at  that  moment  he  was  feeling 
sorry  for  West. 

11  Now  look  here,"  said  West. 

He  explained  how  the  Post  desired  a  man  to  write  sleep- 
inducing  fillers  —  "occasional  articles  of  weight  and  au 
thority"  was  the  way  he  put  it  —  and  wanted  to  know  if 
such  an  opening  would  interest  Mr.  Queed.  Queed  said  he 
supposed  so,  provided  the  Post  took  little  of  his  time  and 
paid  his  board  in  return  for  it.  West  had  no  doubt  that 
everything  could  be  satisfactorily  arranged. 

"Colonel  Cowles  is  the  man  who  hires  and  fires,"  he  ex 
plained.  "Go  to  see  him  in  a  day  or  two,  will  you?  Mean 
time,  I'll  tell  him  all  about  you." 

Presently  West  smiled  himself  out,  leaving  Queed  decid 
edly  relieved  at  the  brief  reprieve.  He  had  been  harried  by 
the  fear  that  his  visitor  would  insist  on  his  stopping  to  pro 
duce  an  article  or  so  while  he  waited.  However,  the  time  had 
come  when  the  inevitable  had  to  be  faced.  His  golden  pri- 


QUEED  45 

vacy  must  be  ravished  for  the  grim  god  of  bread  and  meat. 
The  next  afternoon  he  put  on  his  hat  with  a  bad  grace,  and 
went  forth  to  seek  Colonel  Cowles,  editor-in-chief  of  the 
leading  paper  in  the  State. 

The  morning  Post  was  an  old  paper,  which  had  been  in 
the  hands  of  a  single  family  from  A.  D.  1846  till  only  the 
other  day.  It  had  been  a  power  during  the  war,  a  favorite 
mouthpiece  of  President  Davis.  It  had  stood  like  a  wall 
during  the  cruelties  of  Reconstruction ;  had  fought  the  good 
fight  for  white  man's  rule ;  had  crucified  carpet-baggism  and 
scalawaggery  upon  a  cross  of  burning  adjective.  Later  it 
had  labored  gallantly  for  Tilden;  denounced  Hayes  as  a 
robber;  idolized  Cleveland;  preached  free  trade  with  pure 
passion;  swallowed  free  silver;  stood  "regular,"  though  not 
without  grimaces,  through  Bryanism.  The  Post  was,  in 
short,  a  paper  with  an  honorable  history,  and  everybody 
felt  a  kind  of  affection  for  it.  The  plain  fact  remained, 
however,  that  within  recent  years  a  great  many  worthy 
persons  had  acquired  the  habit  of  reading  the  more  hustling 
State. 

The  Post,  not  to  put  too  fine  a  point  upon  it,  had  for  a 
time  run  fast  to  seed.  The  third  generation  of  its  owners 
had  lost  their  money,  mostly  in  land  speculations  in  the 
suburbs  of  New  York  City,  and  in  the  State  of  Oregon. 
You  could  have  thrown  a  brick  from  their  office  windows 
and  hit  far  better  land  speculations,  but  they  had  the  com 
mon  fault  of  believing  that  things  far  away  from  home 
are  necessarily  and  always  the  best.  The  demand  rose 
for  bigger,  fatter  newspapers,  with  comic  sections  and 
plenty  of  purple  ink,  and  the  Post's  owners  found  them 
selves  unable  to  supply  it.  In  fact  they  had  to  retort  by 
mortgaging  their  property  to  the  hilt  and  cutting  expenses 
to  rock-bottom.  These  were  dark  days  for  the  Post.  That 
it  managed  to  survive  them  at  all  was  due  chiefly  to  the 
personality  of  Colonel  Cowles,  who,  though  doubtless 
laughable  as  a  political  economist,  was  yet  considered  to 
have  his  good  points.  But  the  Hercules-labor  grew  too 


46  QUEED 

heavy  even  for  him,  and  the  paper  was  headed  straight  for 
the  auctioneer's  block  when  new  interests  suddenly  stepped 
in  and  bought  it.  These  interests,  consisting  largely  of  pro 
gressive  men  of  the  younger  generation,  thoroughly  over 
hauled  and  reorganized  the  property,  laid  in  the  needed  purple 
ink,  and  were  now  gradually  driving  the  old  paper  back  to 
the  dividend-paying  point  again. 

Colonel  Cowles,  whose  services  had,  of  course,  been  re 
tained,  was  of  the  old  school  of  journalism,  editor  and 
manager,  too.  Very  little  went  into  the  Post  that  he  had 
not  personally  vised  in  the  proof :  forty  galleys  a  night  were 
child's  play  to  him.  Managing  editor  there  was  none  but 
himself;  the  city  editor  was  his  mere  office-boy  and  mouth 
piece  ;  even  the  august  business  manager,  who  mingled  with 
great  advertisers  on  equal  terms,  was  known  to  take  orders 
from  him.  In  addition  the  Colonel  wrote  three  columns  of 
editorials  every  day.  Of  these  editorials  it  is  enough  to  say 
at  this  point  that  there  were  people  who  liked  them. 

Toward  this  dominant  personality,  the  reluctant  appli 
cant  for  work  now  made  his  way.  He  cut  an  absent-minded 
figure  upon  the  street,  did  Mr.  Queed,  but  this  time  he  made 
his  crossings  without  mishap.  Undisturbed  by  dogs,  he 
landed  at  the  Post  building,  and  in  time  blundered  into 
a  room  described  as  "Editorial"  on  the  glass-door.  A 
friendly  young  girl  sitting  there,  pounding  away  on  a  type 
writer,  referred  him  to  the  next  office,  and  the  young  man, 
opening  the  connecting  door  without  knocking,  passed  in 
side. 

A  full-bodied,  gray-headed,  gray-mustached  man  sat 
in  his  shirt-sleeves  behind  a  great  table,  writing  with  a  very 
black  pencil  in  a  large  sprawling  hand.  He  glanced  up  as 
the  door  opened. 

"Colonel  Cowles?" 

" I  am  the  man,  sir.   How  may  I  serve  you?" 

Queed  laid  on  the  table  the  card  West  had  given  him  with 
a  pencilled  line  of  introduction. 

"Oh  —  Mr.   Queed!    Certainly  —  certainly.    Sit  down, 


QUEED  47 

sir.  I  have  been  expecting  you.  —  Let  me  get  those  papers 
out  of  your  way." 

Colonel  Cowles  had  a  heavy  jaw  and  rather  too  rubicund 
a  complexion.  He  looked  as  if  apoplexy  would  get  him 
some  day.  However,  his  head  was  like  a  lion's  of  the  tribe 
of  Judah;  his  eye  was  kindly;  his  manner  dignified,  courte 
ous,  and  charming.  Queed  had  decided  not  to  set  the 
Colonel  right  in  his  views  on  taxation ;  it  would  mean  only 
a  useless  discussion  which  would  take  time.  To  the  older 
gentleman's  polite  inquiries  relative  to  his  impressions  of 
the  city  and  so  forth,  he  for  the  same  reason  gave  the  brief 
est  possible  replies.  But  the  Colonel,  no  apostle  of  the  doc 
trine  that  time  is  far  more  than  money,  went  off  into  a  long 
monologue,  kindly  designed  to  give  the  young  stranger 
some  idea  of  his  new  surroundings  and  atmosphere. 

"...  Look  out  there,  sir.  It  is  like  that  all  day  long  — 
a  double  stream  of  people  always  pouring  by.  I  have  looked 
out  of  these  windows  for  twenty-five  years,  and  it  was  very 
different  in  the  old  days.  I  remember  when  the  cows  used 
to  come  tinkling  down  around  that  corner  at  milking-time. 
A  twelve-story  office  building  will  rise  there  before  another 
year.  We  have  here  the  finest  city  and  the  finest  State  in 
the  Union.  You  come  to  them,  sir,  at  a  time  of  exceptional 
interest.  We  are  changing  fast,  leaping  forward  very  fast. 
I  'do  not  hold  with  those  who  take  all  change  to  be  progress, 
but  God  grant  that  our  feet  are  set  in  the  right  path.  No 
section  of  the  country  is  moving  more  rapidly,  or,  as  I 
believe,  with  all  our  faults,  to  better  ends  than  this.  My 
own  eyes  have  seen  from  these  windows  a  broken  town, 
stagnant  in  trade  and  population  and  rich  only  in  memories, 
transform  itself  into  the  splendid  thriving  city  you  see 
before  you.  Our  faces,  too  long  turned  backward,  are  set 
at  last  toward  the  future.  From  one  end  of  the  State  to 
another  the  spirit  of  honorable  progress  is  throbbing  through 
our  people.  We  have  revolutionized  and  vastly  improved 
our  school  system.  We  have  wearied  of  mud-holes  and  are 
laying  the  foundations  of  a  network  of  splendid  roads.  We 


48  QUEED 

are  doing  wonders  for  the  public  health.  Our  farmers  are 
learning  to  practice  the  new  agriculture  —  with  plenty  of 
lime,  sir,  plenty  of  lime.  They  grasp  the  fact  that  corn  at  a 
hundred  bushels  to  the  acre  is  no  dream,  but  the  most 
vital  of  realities.  Our  young  men  who  a  generation  ago 
left  us  for  the  irrigated  lands  of  your  Northwest,  are  at  last 
understanding  that  the  finest  farmlands  in  the  country  are 
at  their  doors  for  half  the  price.  With  all  these  changes 
has  come  a  growing  independence  in  political  thought. 
The  old  catchwords  and  bogies  have  lost  their  power.  We 
no  longer  think  that  whatever  wears  the  Democratic  tag 
is  necessarily  right.  We  no  longer  measure  every  Repub 
lican  by  Henry  G.  Surface.  We  no  longer  ..." 

Queed,  somewhat  interested  in  spite  of  himself,  and  toler 
ably  familiar  with  history,  interrupted  to  ask  who  Henry 
G.  Surface  might  be.  The  question  brought  the  Colonel 
up  with  a  jolt. 

"Ah,  well,"  said  he  presently,  with  a  wave  of  his  hand, 
"you  will  hear  that  story  soon  enough."  He  was  silent  a 
moment,  and  then  added,  sadly  and  somewhat  sternly: 
"Young  man,  I  have  reserved  one  count  in  the  total,  the 
biggest  and  best,  for  the  last.  Keep  your  ear  and  eye  open  — 
and  I  mean  the  inner  ear  and  eye  as  well  as  the  outer  — 
keep  your  mind  open,  above  all  keep  your  heart  open,  and 
it  will  be  given  you  to  understand  that  we  have  here  the 
bravest,  the  sweetest,  and  the  kindliest  people  in  the  world. 
The  Lord  has  been  good  to  you  to  send  you  among  them. 
This  is  the  word  of  a  man  in  the  late  evening  of  life  to  one  in 
the  hopeful  morning.  You  will  take  it,  I  hope,  without 
offense.  Are  you  a  Democrat,  sir?" 

"I  am  a  political  economist." 

The  Colonel  smiled.  "Well  said,  sir.  Science  knows  no 
party  lines.  Your  chosen  subject  rises  above  the  valley  of 
partisanry  where  we  old  wheel-horses  plod  —  stinging  each 
other  in  the  dust,  as  the  poet  finely  says.  Mr.  West  has  told 
me  of  your  laurels." 

He  went  on  to  outline  the  business  side  of  what  the  Post 


QUEED  49 

had  to  offer.  Queed  found  himself  invited  to  write  a  certain 
number  of  editorial  articles,  not  to  exceed  six  a  week,  under 
the  Colonel's  direction.  He  had  his  choice  of  working  on 
space,  at  the  rate  of  five  dollars  per  column,  payment  de 
pendent  upon  publication ;  or  of  drawing  a  fixed  honorarium 
of  ten  dollars  per  week,  whether  called  on  for  the  stipulated 
six  articles  or  for  no  articles  at  all.  Queed  decided  to  accept 
the  fixed  honorarium,  hoping  that  there  would  be  many 
weeks  when  he  would  be  called  on  for  no  articles  at  all.  A 
provisional  arrangement  to  run  a  month  was  agreed  upon. 

"I  have,"  said  the  Colonel,  "already  sketched  out  some 
work  for  you  to  begin  on.  The  legislature  meets  here  in 
January.  It  is  important  to  the  State  that  our  whole  tax- 
system  should  be  overhauled  and  reformed.  The  present 
system  is  a  mere  crazy-quilt,  unsatisfactory  in  a  thousand 
ways.  I  suggest  that  you  begin  with  a  careful  study  of  the 
law,  making  yourself  familiar  with  — " 

"I  am  already  familiar  with  it." 

"Ah!  And  what  do  you  think  of  it?" 

"It  is  grotesque." 

"Good!  I  like  a  clean-cut  expression  of  opinion  such  as 
that,  sir.  Now  tell  me  your  criticisms  on  the  law  as  it 
stands,  and  what  you  suggest  as  remedies." 

Queed  did  so  briefly,  expertly.  The  Colonel  was  consider 
ably  impressed  by  his  swift,  searching  summaries. 

"We  may  go  right  ahead,"  said  he.  "I  wish  you  would 
block  out  a  series  of  articles  —  eight,  ten,  or  twelve,  as  you 
think  best  —  designed  to  prepare  the  public  mind  for  a 
thorough-going  reform  and  point  the  way  that  the  reform 
should  take.  Bring  this  schedule  to  me  to-morrow,  if  you 
will  be  so  good,  and  we  will  go  over  it  together." 

Queed,  privately  amused  at  the  thought  of  Colonel 
Cowles's  revising  his  views  on  taxation,  rose  to  go. 

"By  the  bye,"  said  the  Colonel,  unluckily  struck  by  a 
thought,  "  I  myself  wrote  a  preliminary  article  on  tax  re 
form  a  week  or  so  ago,  meaning  to  follow  it  up  with  others 
later  on.  Perhaps  you  had  best  read  that  before  — " 


50  QUEED 

"I  have  already  read  it." 

"Ah!   How  did  it  strike  you?" 

"You  ask  me  that?" 

"Certainly,"  said  Colonel  Cowles,  a  little  surprised. 

"Well,  since  you  ask  me,  I  will  say  that  I  thought  it 
rather  amusing." 

The  Colonel  looked  nettled.  He  was  by  nature  a  choleric 
man,  but  in  his  age  he  had  learned  the  futility  of  disputa 
tion  and  affray,  and  nowadays  kept  a  tight  rein  upon  him 
self. 

"You  are  frank  sir — 'tis  a  commendable  quality. 
Doubtless  your  work  will  put  my  own  poor  efforts  to  the 
blush." 

"I  shall  leave  you  to  judge  of  that,  Colonel  Cowles." 

The  Colonel,  abandoning  his  hospitable  plan  of  inviting 
his  new  assistant  to  sup  with  him  at  the  club,  bowed  with 
dignity,  and  Queed  eagerly  left  him.  Glancing  at  his  watch 
in  the  elevator,  the  young  man  figured  that  the  interview, 
including  going  and  coming,  would  stand  him  in  an  hour's 
time,  which  was  ten  minutes  more  than  he  had  allowed  for  it. 


V 

Selections  from  Contemporary  Opinions  of  Mr.  Queed;  also 
concerning  Henry  G.  Surface,  his  Life  and  Deeds;  of  Fiji, 
the  Landlady's  Daughter,  and  how  she  happened  to  look  up 
Altruism  in  the  Dictionary. 

A  MONTH  later,  one  icy  afternoon,  Charles  Gardiner 
West  ran  into  Colonel  Cowles  at  the  club,  where  the 
Colonel,  a  lone  widower,  repaired  each  day  at  six 
p.  M.,  there  to  talk  over  the  state  of  the  Union  till  nine- 
thirty. 

"  Colonel,"  said  West,  dropping  into  a  chair,  "  man  to  man, 
what  is  your  opinion  of  Doctor  Queed 's  editorials?" 

"They  are  unanswerable,"  said  the  Colonel,  and  con 
sulted  his  favorite  ante-prandial  refreshment. 

West  laughed.  "Yes,  but  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
general  public,  Constant  Reader,  Pro  Bono  Publico,  and  all 
that?" 

"No  subscriber  will  ever  be  angered  by  them." 

"Would  you  say  that  they  helped  the  editorial  page  or 
not?" 

"They  lend  to  it  an  academic  elegance,  a  scientific  stateli- 
ness,  a  certain  grand  and  austere  majesty — " 

"Colonel,  I  asked  you  for  your  opinion  of  those  articles." 

"  Damn  it,  sir,"  roared  the  Colonel,  "  I  Ve  never  read  one." 

Later  West  repeated  the  gist  of  this  conversation  to  Miss 
Weyland,  who  ornamented  with  him  a  tiny  dinner  given 
that  evening  at  the  home  of  their  very  good  friends,  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Stewart  Byrd. 

It  was  a  beautiful  little  dinner,  as  befitted  the  hospitable 
distinction  of  the  givers.  The  Stewart  Byrds  were  hosts 
among  a  thousand.  In  him,  as  it  further  happens,  West  (him 
self  the  beau  ideal  of  so  many)  had  from  long  ago  recognized 


52  QUEED 

his  own  paragon  and  pattern ;  a  worthy  one,  indeed,  this  tall 
young  man  whose  fine  abilities  and  finer  faiths  were  already 
writing  his  name  so  large  upon  the  history  of  his  city.  About 
the  dim-lit  round  of  his  table  there  were  gathered  but  six  this 
evening,  including  the  host  and  hostess;  the  others,  besides 
Sharlee  Weyland  and  West,  being  Beverley  Byrd  and  Miss 
Avery:  the  youngest  of  the  four  Byrd  brothers,  and  heir 
with  them  to  one  of  the  largest  fortunes  in  the  State; 
and  the  only  daughter  of  old  Avery,  who  came  to  us  from 
Mauch  Chunk,  Pa.,  his  money  preceding  him  in  a  special 
train  of  box  cars,  especially  invented  for  the  transportation 
of  Pennsylvania  millions  to  places  where  the  first  families 
congregate. 

"And  I  had  to  confess  that  I'd  never  read  one  either. 
I  did  begin  one,"  said  West  —  "it  was  called  'Elementary 
Principles  of  Incidence  and  Distribution,'  I  remember  — 
but  the  hour  was  eleven- thirty  and  I  fell  asleep." 

"I  know  exactly  how  you  felt  about  it,"  said  Sharlee, 
"for  I  have  read  them  all  — moi!" 

He  looked  at  her  with  boundless  admiration.  "His  one 
reader!" 

"There  are  two  of  us,  if  you  please.  I  think  of  getting  up 
a  club  —  Associated  Sons  and  Daughters  of  Mr.  Queed's 
Faithful  Followers;  President,  Me.  I'll  make  the  other 
member  Secretary,  for  he  is  experienced  in  that  work.  He 's 
at  present  Secretary  of  the  Tax  Reform  League  in  New  York. 
Did  Colonel  Cowles  show  you  the  wonderful  letter  that 
came  from  him,  asking  the  name  of  the  man  who  was 
writing  the  Post's  masterly  tax  articles,  et  cetera,  et  cetera?  " 

"No  —  really!  But  tell  me,  how  have  you,  as  President, 
enjoyed  them?" 

"I  haven't  understood  a  single  word  in  any  of  them. 
Where  on  earth  did  he  dig  up  his  fearful  vocabulary?  Yet 
it  is  the  plain  duty  of  both  of  us  to  read  these  articles :  you 
as  one  of  his  employers,  I  as  the  shrewd  landlady's  agent 
who  keeps  a  watchful  eye  upon  the  earning  power  of  her 
boarders." 


QUEED  53 

West  mused.  "He  has  a  wonderful  genius  for  crushing 
all  the  interest  out  of  any  subject  he  touches,  has  n't  he? 
Yet  manifestly  the  first  duty  of  an  editorial  is  to  get  itself 
read.  How  old  do  you  think  he  is?" 

"Oh  —  anywhere  from  twenty-five  to  —  forty-seven." 

"He'll  be  twenty-four  this  month.  I  see  him  sometimes 
at  the  office,  you  know,  where  he  still  treats  me  like  an  in 
trusive  subscription  agent.  In  some  ways,  he  is  undoubt 
edly  the  oldest  man  in  the  world.  In  another  way  he  has  n't 
any  age  at  all.  Spiritually  he  is  unborn  —  he  simply  does  n't 
exist  at  all.  I  diagnose  his  complaint  as  ingrowing  egoism 
of  a  singularly  virulent  variety." 

It  was  beyond  Sharlee's  power  to  controvert  this  diagno 
sis.  Mr.  Queed  had  in  fact  impressed  her  as  the  most 
frankly  and  grossly  self-centred  person  she  had  ever  seen 
in  her  life.  But  unlike  West,  her  uppermost  feeling  in  regard 
to  him  was  a  strong  sense  of  pity.  She  knew  things  about 
his  life  that  West  did  not  know  and  probably  never  would. 
For  though  the  little  Doctor  of  Mrs.  Paynter's  had  prob 
ably  not  intended  to  give  her  a  confidence,  and  certainly 
had  no  right  to  do  so,  she  had  thus  regarded  what  he  said 
to  her  in  the  dining-room  that  night,  and  of  his  pathetic 
situation  in  regard  to  a  father  she  never  meant  to  say  a  word 
to  anybody. 

"I  sized  him  up  for  a  remarkable  man,"  said  she,  "when 
I  saw  the  wonderful  way  he  sat  upon  his  hat  that  afternoon. 
Don't  you  remember?  He  struck  me  then  as  the  most 
natural,  unconscious,  and  direct  human  being  I  ever  saw  — 
don't  you  think  that?  —  and  now  think  of  his  powers  of 
concentration.  All  his  waking  time,  except  what  he  gives 
to  the  Post,  goes  to  that  awful  book  of  his.  He  is  ridiculous 
now  because  his  theory  of  life  is  ridiculous.  But  suppose 
it  popped  into  his  head  some  day  to  switch  all  that  direct 
ness  and  concentrated  energy  in  some  other  direction.  Don't 
you  think  he  might  be  rather  a  formidable  young  person?" 

West  conceded  that  there  might  be  something  in  that. 
And  happening  to  glance  across  the  flower-sweet  table  at 


54  QUEED 

the  moment,  he  was  adroitly  detached  and  re-attached  by 
the  superbly  " finished"  Miss  Avery. 

The  little  dinner  progressed.  Nor  was  this  the  only  spot 
in  town  where  evening  meals  were  going  forward  amid 
stimulating  talk.  Far  away  over  the  town,  at  the  same  hour, 
the  paying  guests  of  Mrs.  Paynter's  were  gathered  about 
her  hospitable  board,  plying  the  twin  arts  of  supping  and 
talking.  And  as  Sharlee's  fellow-diners  talked  of  Mr.  Queed, 
it  chanced  that  Mr.  Queed's  fellow-suppers  were  talking  of 
Sharlee,  or  at  any  rate  of  her  family's  famous  misfortune. 
Mr.  Queed,  it  is  true,  did  not  appreciate  this  fact,  for  the 
name  of  the  female  agent  who  had  taken  his  Twenty  from 
him  could  not  have  been  more  unknown  to  him  if  she  had 
been  a  dweller  in  Phrygia  or  far  Cappadocia. 

Major  Brooke  told,  not  by  request,  one  of  his  well-known 
stories  about  how  he  had  flouted  and  routed  the  Repub 
licans  in  1875.  The  plot  of  these  stories  was  always  the  same, 
but  the  setting  shifted  about  here  and  there,  and  this  one 
had  to  do  with  a  county  election  in  which,  the  Major  said, 
the  Republicans  and  negroes  had  gone  the  limit  trying  to 
swindle  the  Democrats  out  of  the  esteemed  offices. 

"And  I  said,  'You'  —  the  ladies  will  excuse  me,  I  'm  sure 
— '  You  lying  rascal,'  s'  I,  'don't  you  dare  to  contradict  me! 
You're  all  tarred  with  the  same  pitch,'  s'  I.  'Everything 
you  touch  turns  corrupt  and  rotten.  Look  at  Henry  G. 
Surface,'  s'  I.  'The  finest  fellow  God  ever  made,  till  the 
palsied  hand  of  Republicanism  fell  upon  him,  and  now  can 
kering  and  rotting  in  jail  — '  ' 

"But  Henry  G.  Surface  was  n't  rotting  in  jail  in  1875," 
said  William  Klinker,  and  boldly  winked  at  the  little 
Doctor. 

The  Major,  disconcerted  for  an  instant  by  his  anachron 
ism,  recovered  superbly.  "My  vision,  sir,  was  prophetic. 
The  stain  was  upon  him.  The  cloven  foot  had  already  been 
betrayed.  ..." 

"And  who  was  Henry  G.  Surface?"  inquired  Mr.  Queed. 

"What!     You    haven't   heard    that   infamous   story!" 


QUEED  55 

cried  the  Major,  with  the  surprised  delight  of  the  invet 
erate  raconteur  who  has  unexpectedly  stumbled  upon  an 
audience. 

A  chair-leg  scraped,  and  Professor  Nicolovius  was  stand 
ing,  bowing  in  his  sardonic  way  to  Mrs.  Paynter. 

"  Since  I  have  happened  to  hear  it  often,  madam,  through 
Major  Brooke's  tireless  kindness,  you  will  perhaps  be  so 
good  as  to  excuse  me." 

And  he  stalked  out  of  the  room,  head  up,  his  auburn 
goatee  stabbing  the  atmosphere  before  him,  in  rather  a 
heavy  silence. 

"Pish!"  snapped  the  Major,  when  the  door  had  safely 
shut.  And  tapping  his  forehead  significantly,  he  gave  his 
head  a  few  solemn  wags  and  launched  upon  the  worn 
biography  of  Henry  G.  Surface. 

Tattered  with  much  use  as  the  story  is,  and  was,  the 
boarders  listened  with  a  perennial  interest  while  Major 
Brooke  expounded  the  familiar  details.  His  wealth  of 
picturesque  language  we  may  safely  omit,  and  briefly  re 
mind  the  student  of  the  byways  of  history  how  Henry  G. 
Surface  found  himself,  during  the  decade  following  Appo- 
mattox,  with  his  little  world  at  his  feet.  He  was  thirty  at 
the  time,  handsome,  gifted,  high-spirited,  a  brilliant  young 
man  who  already  stood  high  in  the  councils  of  the  State. 
But  he  was  also  restless  in  disposition,  arrogant,  over- 
weeningly  vain,  and  ambitious  past  all  belief —  "a  yellow 
streak  in  him,  and  we  did  n't  know  it!"  bellowed  the  Major. 
Bitterly  chagrined  by  his  failure  to  secure,  from  a  legisla 
ture  of  the  early  seventies,  the  United  States  Senatorship 
which  he  had  confidently  expected,  young  Surface,  in  a 
burst  of  anger  and  resentment,  committed  the  unforgivable 
sin.  He  went  over  bag  and  baggage  to  the  other  side,  to  the 
"nigger  party  "  whom  all  his  family,  friends,  and  relations,  all 
his  "class,"  everybody  else  with  his  instincts  and  traditions, 
were  desperately  struggling,  by  hook  and  by  crook,  to  crush. 

In  our  mild  modern  preferences  as  between  presidents, 
or  this  governor  and  that,  we  catch  no  reminiscence  of  the 


56  QUEED 

fierce  antagonisms  of  the  elections  of  reconstruction  days. 
The  idolized  young  tribune  of  the  people  became  a  Judas 
Iscariot  overnight,  with  no  silver  pieces  as  the  price  of  his 
apostasy.  If  he  expected  immediate  preferment  from  the 
other  camp,  he  was  again  bitterly  disappointed.  Life  mean 
time  had  become  unbearable  to  him.  He  was  ostracized 
more  studiously  than  any  leper;  it  is  said  that  his  own 
father  cut  him  when  they  passed  each  other  in  the  street. 
His  young  wife  died,  heartbroken,  it  was  believed,  by  the 
flood  of  hatred  and  vilification  that  poured  in  upon  her 
husband.  One  man  alone  stood  by  Surface  in  his  down 
fall,  his  classmate  and  friend  of  his  bosom  from  the  cradle, 
John  Randolph  Weyland,  a  good  man  and  a  true.  Wey 
land 's  affection  never  faltered.  When  Surface  withdrew 
from  the  State  with  a  heart  full  of  savage  rancor,  Weyland 
went  every  year  or  two  to  visit  him,  first  in  Chicago  and 
later  in  New  York,  where  the  exile  was  not  slow  in  winning 
name  and  fortune  as  a  daring  speculator.  And  when  Wey 
land  died,  leaving  a  widow  and  infant  daughter,  he  gave  a 
final  proof  of  his  trust  by  making  Surface  sole  trustee  of  his 
estate,  which  was  a  large  one  for  that  time  and  place.  Few 
have  forgotten  how  the  political  traitor  rewarded  this 
misplaced  confidence.  The  crash  came  within  a  few 
months.  Surface  was  arrested  in  the  company  of  a  woman 
whom  he  referred  to  as  his  wife.  The  trust  fund,  saving  a 
fraction,  was  gone,  swallowed  up  to  stay  some  ricketty 
deal.  Surface  was  convicted  of  embezzlement  and  sentenced 
to  ten  years  at  hard  labor,  and  every  Democrat  in  the  State 
cried,  "I  told  you  so."  What  had  become  of  him  after  his 
release  from  prison,  nobody  knew;  some  of  the  boarders 
said  that  he  was  living  in  the  west,  or  in  Australia;  others, 
that  he  was  not  living  anywhere,  unless  on  the  shores  of 
perpetual  torment.  All  agreed  that  the  alleged  second  Mrs. 
Surface  had  long  since  died  —  all,  that  is,  but  Klinker,  who 
said  that  she  had  only  pretended  to  die  in  order  to  make  a 
fade-away  with  the  gate  receipts.  For  many  persons  be 
lieved,  it  seemed,  that  Surface,  by  clever  juggling  of  his 


QUEED  57 

books,  had  managed  to  "hold  out"  a  large  sum  of  money 
in  the  enforced  settlement  of  his  affairs.  At  any  rate,  very 
little  of  it  ever  came  back  to  the  family  of  the  man  who  had 
put  trust  in  him,  and  that  was  why  the  daughter,  whose 
name  was  Charlotte  Lee  Weyland,  now  worked  for  her 
daily  bread. 

That  Major  Brooke's  hearers  found  this  story  of  ever 
green  interest  was  natural  enough.  For  besides  the  brilliant 
blackness  of  the  narrative,  there  was  the  close  personal 
connection  that  all  Paynterites  had  with  some  of  its  chief 
personages.  Did  not  the  sister-in-law  of  John  Randolph 
Weyland  sit  and  preside  over  them  daily,  pouring  their 
coffee  morning  and  night  with  her  own  hands?  And  did 
not  the  very  girl  whose  fortune  had  been  stolen,  the  bereft 
herself,  come  now  and  then  to  sit  among  them,  occupying 
that  identical  chair  which  Mr.  Bylash  could  touch  by  merely 
putting  out  his  hand?  Henry  G.  Surface's  story?  Why, 
Mrs.  Paynter's  wrote  it! 

These  personal  bearings  were  of  course  lost  upon  Mr. 
Queed,  the  name  Weyland  being  utterly  without  significance 
to  him.  He  left  the  table  the  moment  he  had  absorbed  all 
the  supper  he  wanted.  In  the  hall  he  ran  upon  Professor 
Nicolovius,  the  impressive-looking  master  of  Greek  at 
Milner's  Collegiate  School,  who,  already  hatted  and  over- 
coated,  was  drawing  on  his  gloves  under  the  depressed 
fancy  chandelier.  The  old  professor  glanced  up  at  the 
sound  of  footsteps  and  favored  Queed  with  a  bland  smile. 

"I  can't  resist  taking  our  doughty  swashbuckler  down  a 
peg  or  two  every  now  and  then,"  said  he.  "Did  you  ever 
know  such  an  interminable  ass?" 

"Really,  I  never  thought  about  it,"  said  the  young  man, 
raising  his  eye-brows  in  surprise  and  annoyance  at  being 
addressed. 

"Then  take  my  word  for  it.  You'll  not  find  his  match  in 
America.  You  show  your  wisdom,  at  any  rate,  in  giving  as 
little  of  your  valuable  time  as  possible  to  our  charming 
supper- table." 


58  QUEED 

"That  hardly  argues  any  Solomonic  wisdom,  I  fancy." 

"You're  in  the  hands  of  the  Philistines  here,  Mr.  Queed," 
said  Nicolovius,  snapping  his  final  button.  "  May  I  say  that 
I  have  read  some  of  your  editorials  in  the  Post  with  —  ah  — 
pleasure  and  profit?  I  should  feel  flattered  if  you  would  come 
to  see  me  in  my  room  some  evening,  where  I  can  offer  you, 
at  any  rate,  a  fire  and  a  so-so  cigar." 

"Thank  you.  However,  I  do  not  smoke,"  said  Doctor 
Queed,  and,  bowing  coldly  to  the  old  professor,  started  rap 
idly  up  the  stairs. 

Aloft  the  young  man  went  to  his  scriptorium,  happy  in 
the  thought  that  five  hours  of  incorruptible  leisure  and 
unswerving  devotion  to  his  heart's  dearest  lay  before  him. 
It  had  been  a  day  when  the  Post  did  not  require  him;  hour 
by  hour  since  breakfast  he  had  fared  gloriously  upon  his 
book.  But  to-night  his  little  room  was  cold;  unendurably 
cold ;  not  even  the  flamings  of  genius  could  overcome  its 
frigor ;  and  hardly  half  an  hour  had  passed  before  he  became 
aware  that  his  sanctum  was  altogether  uninhabitable. 
Bitterly  he  faced  the  knowledge  that  he  must  fare  forth  into 
the  outer  world  of  the  dining-room  that  night ;  irritably  he 
gathered  up  his  books  and  papers. 

Half-way  down  the  first  flight  a  thought  struck  Queed, 
and  he  retraced  his  steps.  The  last  time  that  he  had  been 
compelled  to  the  dining-room  the  landlady's  daughter  had 
been  there  —  (it  was  all  an  accident,  poor  child !  Had  n't 
she  vowed  to  herself  never  to  intrude  on  the  little  Doctor 
again?)  —  and,  stupidly  breaking  the  point  of  her  pencil,  had 
had  the  hardihood  to  ask  him  for  the  loan  of  his  knife.  Mr. 
Queed  was  determined  that  this  sort  of  thing  should  not 
occur  again.  A  method  for  enforcing  his  determination,  at 
once  firm  and  courteous,  had  occurred  to  him.  One  could 
never  tell  when  trespassers  would  stray  into  the  dining-room 
—  his  dining-room  by  right  of  his  exalted  claim.  Rummag 
ing  in  his  bottom  bureau  drawer,  he  produced  a  placard, 
like  a  narrow  little  sign-board,  and  tucking  it  under  his  arm, 
went  on  downstairs. 


QUEED  59 

The  precaution  was  by  no  means  superfluous.  Disgust 
ingly  enough  the  landlady's  daughter  was  once  more  in  his 
dining-room  before  him,  the  paraphernalia  of  her  algebra 
spread  over  half  the  Turkey- red  cloth.  Fin  looked  up, 
plainly  terrified  at  his  entrance  and  his  forbidding  expres 
sion.  It  was  her  second  dreadful  blunder,  poor  luckless 
little  wight!  She  had  faithfully  waited  a  whole  half-hour, 
and  Mr.  Queed  had  shown  no  signs  of  coming  down.  Never 
had  he  waited  so  long  as  this  when  he  meant  to  claim  the 
dining-room.  Mrs.  Paynter's  room,  nominally  heated  by  a 
flume  from  the  Latrobe  heater  in  the  parlor,  was  noticeably 
coolish  on  a  wintry  night.  Besides,  there  was  no  table  in  it, 
and  everybody  knows  that  algebra  is  hard  enough  under 
the  most  favorable  conditions,  let  alone  having  to  do  it  on 
your  knee.  It  seemed  absolutely  safe;  Fifi  had  yielded  to  the 
summons  of  the  familiar  comforts ;  and  now  — 

"Oh  —  how  do  you  do?"  she  was  saying  in  a  frightened 
voice. 

Mr.  Queed  bowed,  indignantly.  Silently  he  marched  to 
his  chair,  the  one  just  opposite,  and  sat  down  in  offended 
majesty.  To  Fifi  it  seemed  that  to  get  up  at  once  and  leave 
the  room,  which  she  would  gladly  have  done,  would  be  too 
crude  a  thing  to  do,  too  gross  a  rebuke  to  the  little  Doctor's 
Ego.  She  was  wrong,  of  course,  though  her  sensibilities  were 
indubitably  right.  Therefore  she  feigned  enormous  engross 
ment  in  her  algebra,  and  struggled  to  make  herself  as  small 
and  inoffensive  as  she  could. 

The  landlady's  daughter  wore  a  Peter  Thompson  suit  of 
blue  serge,  which  revealed  a  few  inches  of  very  thin  white 
neck.  She  was  sixteen  and  reddish-haired,  and  it  was  her 
last  year  at  the  High  School.  The  reference  is  to  Fifi's  com 
pletion  of  the  regular  curriculum,  and  not  to  any  impend 
ing  promotion  to  a  still  Higher  School.  She  was  a  fond, 
uncomplaining  little  thing,  who  had  never  hurt  anybody's 
feelings  in  her  life,  and  her  eyes,  which  were  light  blue,  had 
just  that  look  of  ethereal  sweetness  you  see  in  Burne- 
Jones's  women  and  for  just  that  same  reason.  Her  syrup 


60  QUEED 

she  took  with  commendable  faithfulness;  the  doctor,  in 
rare  visits,  spoke  cheerily  of  the  time  when  she  was  to  be 
quite  strong  and  well  again;  but  there  were  moments  when 
SharleeWeyland,  looking  at  her  little  cousin's  face  in  repose, 
felt  her  heart  stop  still. 

Fifi  dallied  with  her  algebra,  hoping  and  praying  that  she 
would  not  have  to  cough.  She  had  been  very  happy  all  that 
day.  There  was  no  particular  reason  for  it;  so  it  was  the 
nicest  kind  of  happiness,  the  kind  that  comes  from  inside, 
which  even  the  presence  of  the  little  Doctor  could  not  take 
away  from  her.  Heaven  knew  that  Fifi  harbored  no  grudge 
against  Mr.  Queed,  and  she  had  not  forgotten  what  Sharlee 
said  about  being  gentle  with  him.  But  how  to  be  gentle 
with  so  austere  a  young  Socrates?  Raising  her  head  upon 
the  pretext  of  turning  a  page,  Fifi  stole  a  hurried  glance  at 
him. 

The  first  thing  Mr.  Queed  had  done  on  sitting  down  was  to 
produce  his  placard,  silently  congratulating  himself  on 
having  brought  it.  Selecting  the  book  which  he  would  be 
least  likely  to  need,  he  shoved  it  well  forward,  nearly  half 
way  across  the  table,  and  against  the  volume  propped  up 
his  little  pasteboard  sign,  the  printed  part  staring  straight 
toward  Fifi.  The  sign  was  an  old  one  which  he  had  chanced 
to  pick  up  years  ago  at  the  Astor  Library.  It  read: 

SILENCE 

Arch-type  and  model  of  courteous  warning! 

When  Fifi  read  the  little  Doctor's  sign,  her  feelings  were 
not  in  the  least  wounded,  insufficiently  subtle  though  some 
particular  people  might  have  thought  its  admonition  to  be. 
On  the  contrary,  it  was  only  by  the  promptest  work  in  get 
ting  her  handkerchief  into  her  mouth  that  she  avoided 
laughing  out  loud.  The  two  of  them  alone  in  the  room  and 
his  Silence  sign  gazing  at  her  like  a  pasteboard  Gorgon ! 

Fifi  became  more  than  ever  interested  in  Mr.  Queed.  An 
intense  and  strictly  feminine  curiosity  filled  her  soul  to 
know  something  of  the  nature  of  that  work  which  demanded 


QUEED  61 

so  stern  a  noiselessness.  Observing  rigorously  the  printed 
Rule  of  the  Dining-Room,  she  could  not  forbear  to  pilfer 
glance  after  glance  at  the  promulgator  of  it.  Mr.  Queed  was 
writing,  not  reading,  to-night.  He  wrote  very  slowly  on 
half-size  yellow  pads,  worth  seventy-five  cents  a  dozen, 
using  the  books  only  for  reference.  Now  he  tore  off  a  sheet 
only  partly  filled  with  his  small  handwriting,  and  at  the 
head  of  a  new  sheet  inscribed  a  Roman  numeral,  with  a 
single  word  under  that.  Like  her  cousin  Sharlee  at  an  earlier 
date,  Fifi  experienced  a  desire  to  study  out,  upside  down, 
what  this  heading  was.  Several  peeks  were  needed,  with 
artful  attention  to  algebra  between  whiles,  before  she  was 
at  last  convinced  that  she  had  it.  Undoubtedly  it  was 

XVIII 

ALTRUISM 

There  was  nothing  enormous  about  Fifi's  vocabulary, 
but  she  well  knew  what  to  do  in  a  case  like  this.  Behind  her 
stood  a  battered  little  walnut  bookcase,  containing  the 
Paynter  library.  After  a  safe  interval  of  absorption  in  her 
sums,  she  pushed  back  her  chair  with  the  most  respectful 
quietude  and  pulled  out  a  tall  volume.  The  pages  of  it  she 
turned  with  blank  studious  face  but  considerable  inner 
expectancy:  Af  —  Ai  —  Al  —  Alf.  .  .  . 

A  giggle  shattered  the  academic  calm,  and  Fifi,  in  horror, 
realized  that  she  was  the  author  of  it.  She  looked  up 
quickly,  and  her  worst  fears  were  realized.  Mr.  Queed  was 
staring  at  her,  as  one  scarcely  able  to  credit  his  own  senses, 
icy  rebuke  piercing  through  and  overflowing  his  great  round 
spectacles. 

" I  beg  your  pardon!  —  Mr.  Queed.  It  —  it  slipped  out, 
really—" 

But  the  young  man  thought  that  the  time  had  come  when 
this  question  of  noise  in  his  dining-room  must  be  settled 
once  and  for  all. 

"Indeed?  Be  kind  enough  to  explain  the  occasion  of  it." 


62  QUEED 

"Why,"  said  Fifi,  too  truthful  to  prevaricate  and  com 
pletely  cowed,  "it  —  it  was  only  the  meaning  of  a  word 
here.  It  —  was  silly  of  me.  I  —  I  can't  explain  it  —  ex 
actly  —  " 

"Suppose  you  try.  Since  your  merriment  interrupts  my 
work,  I  claim  the  privilege  of  sharing  it." 

"Well !  I  —  I  —  happened  to  see  that  word  at  the  head  of 
the  page  you  are  writing  — " 

"Proceed." 

"I  —  I  looked  it  up  in  the  dictionary.  It  says,"  she  read 
out  with  a  gulp  and  a  cough,  "it  means  'self-sacrificing 
devotion  to  the  interests  of  others. ' ' 

The  poor  child  thought  her  point  must  now  be  indelicately 
plain,  but  the  lips  of  Doctor  Queed  merely  emitted  another 
close-clipped :  ' '  Proceed . ' ' 

At  a  desperate  loss  as  she  was,  Fifi  was  suddenly  visited 
by  an  idea.  "Oh!  I  see.  You're  —  you're  writing  against 
altruism,  are  n't  you?" 

"What  leads  you  to  that  conclusion,  if  I  may  ask?" 

"Why  —  I  —  I  suppose  it's  the  —  way  you  —  you  do. 
Of  course  I  ought  n't  to  have  said  it  — " 

"Go  on.  What  way  that  I  do?" 

Poor  Fifi  saw  that  she  was  floundering  in  ever  more 
deeply.  With  the  boldness  of  despair  she  blurted  out:  "Well 
—  one  thing  —  you  sent  me  out  of  the  room  that  night  — 
when  I  coughed,  you  know.  I  —  I  don't  understand  about 
altruism  like  you  do,  but  I  —  should  think  it  was  —  my 
interests  to  stay  here  — " 

There  followed  a  brief  silence,  which  made  Fifi  more  mis 
erable  than  any  open  rebuke,  and  then  Mr.  Queed  said  in  a 
dry  tone:  "I  am  engaged  upon  a  work  of  great  importance 
to  the  public,  I  may  say  to  posterity.  Perhaps  you  can 
appreciate  that  such  a  work  is  entitled  to  the  most  favor 
able  conditions  in  which  to  pursue  it." 

"Of  course.  Indeed  I  understand  perfectly,  Mr.  Queed," 
said  Fifi,  immediately  touched  by  what  seemed  like  kind 
ness  from  him.  And  she  added  innocently  :  "  All  men  — 


QUEED  63 

writing  men,  I  mean  —  feel  that  way  about  their  work  — 
I  suppose.  I  remember  Mr.  Sutro  who  used  to  have  the 
very  same  room  you're  in  now.  He  was  writing  a  five-act 
play,  all  in  poetry,  to  show  the  horrors  of  war,  and  he  used 
to  say  — " 

The  young  man  involuntarily  shuddered.  "I  have 
nothing  to  do  with  other  men.  I  am  thinking,"  he  said  with 
rather  an  unfortunate  choice  of  words,  "  only  of  myself." 

"Oh  —  I  see!   Now  I  understand  exactly!" 

"What  is  it  that  you  see  and  understand  so  exactly?" 

"Why,  the  way  you  feel  about  altruism.  You  believe  in 
it  for  other  people,  but  not  for  yourself!  Is  n't  that  right?" 

They  stared  across  the  table  at  each  other:  innocent  Fifi, 
who  barely  knew  the  meaning  of  altruism,  but  had  practiced 
it  from  the  time  she  could  practice  anything,  and  the  little 
Doctor,  who  knew  everything  about  altruism  that  social 
science  would  ever  formulate,  and  had  stopped  right  there. 
All  at  once,  his  look  altered;  from  objective  it  became  sub 
jective.  The  question  seemed  suddenly  to  hook  onto  some 
thing  inside,  like  a  still  street-car  gripping  hold  of  a  cable 
and  beginning  to  move;  the  mind's  eye  of  the  young  man 
appeared  to  be  seized  and  swept  inward.  Presently  without 
a  word  he  resumed  his  writing. 

Fifi  was  much  disturbed  at  the  effect  of  her  artless  ques 
tion,  and  just  when  everything  was  beginning  to  go  so 
nicely  too.  In  about  half  an  hour,  when  she  got  up  to  retire, 
she  said  timidly:  — 

"I'm  sorry  if  I  —  I  was  rude  just  now,  Mr.  Queed.  In 
deed,  I  did  n't  mean  to  be.  .  .  ." 

"  I  did  not  say  that  you  were  rude,"  he  answered  without 
looking  up. 

But  at  the  door  Fifi  was  arrested  by  his  voice. 

1 '  Why  do  you  think  it  to  your  advantage  to  work  in  here  ? ' ' 

"It's  — it's  a  good  deal  warmer,  you  know,"  said  Fifi, 
flustered,  "and  —  then  of  course  there's  the  table  and 
lamp.  But  it's  quite  all  right  upstairs  —  really!" 

He  made  no  answer. 


VI 

Autobiographical  Data  imparted,  for  Sound  Business  Reasons, 
to  a  Landlady's  Agent;  of  the  Agent's  Other  Title,  etc. 

WHILE  all  move  in  slots  in  this  world,  Mr.  Queed's 
slot  was  infinitely  more  clearly  marked  than  any 
of  his  neighbors'.    It  ran  exclusively  between  the 
heaven  of  his  room  and  the  hades  of  the  Post  office;  mani 
festing  itself  at  the  latter  place  in  certain  staid  writings  done 
in  exchange  for  ten  dollars,  currency  of  the  realm,  paid  down 
each  and  every  Saturday.    Into  this  slot  he  had  been  lifted, 
as  it  werey  by  the  ears,  by  a  slip  of  a  girl  of  the  name  of 
Charlotte  Lee  Weyland,  though  it  was  some  time  before 
he  ever  thought  of  it  in  that  way. 

In  the  freemasonry  of  the  boarding-house,  the  young  man 
was  early  accepted  as  he  was.  He  was  promptly  voted  the 
driest,  most  uninteresting  and  self-absorbed  savant  ever 
seen.  Even  Miss  Miller,  ordinarily  indefatigable  where 
gentlemen  were  concerned,  soon  gave  him  up.  To  Mr. 
Bylash  she  spoke  contemptuously  of  him,  but  secretly 
she  was  awed  by  his  stately  manner  of  speech  and  his 
godlike  indifference  to  all  pleasures,  including  those  of 
female  society.  Of  them  all,  Nicolovius  was  the  only  one 
who  seemed  in  the  least  impressed  by  Mr.  Queed's  appoint 
ment  as  editorial  writer  on  the  Post.  With  the  others  the 
exalted  world  he  moved  in  was  so  remote  from  theirs  that 
no  surprises  were  possible  there,  and  if  informed  that  the 
little  Doctor  had  been  elected  president  of  Harvard  Uni 
versity,  it  would  have  seemed  all  in  the  day's  work  to 
William  Klinker.  Klinker  was  six  feet  high,  red-faced  and 
friendly,  and  Queed  preferred  his  conversation  above  any 
heard  at  Mrs.  Paynter's  table.  It  reminded  him  very  much 
of  his  friend  the  yeggman  in  New  York. 


QUEED  65 

What  went  on  behind  the  door  of  the  tiny  Scriptorium 
the  boarders  could  only  guess.  It  may  be  said  that  its 
owner's  big  grievance  against  the  world  was  that  he  had  to 
leave  it  occasionally  to  earn  his  bread  and  meat.  Apart  from 
this  he  never  left  it  in  those  days  except  for  one  reason, 
viz.,  the  consumption  three  times  a  day  of  the  said  bread 
and  meat.  Probably  this  was  one  explanation  of  the  marked 
pallor  of  his  cheek,  but  of  such  details  as  this  he  never  took 
the  smallest  notice. 

Under  the  tiny  bed  were  three  boxes  of  books,  chief  fruit 
of  the  savings  of  an  inexpensive  lifetime.  But  the  books 
were  now  merely  the  occasional  stimulus  of  a  mind  already 
well  stored  with  their  strength,  well  fortified  against  their 
weaknesses.  Nowadays  nearly  all  of  Queed's  time,  which  he 
administered  by  an  iron-clad  Schedule  of  Hours,  duly  drawn 
up,  went  to  the  actual  writing  of  his  Magnum  Opus.  He 
had  practically  decided  that  it  should  be  called  "  The  Science 
of  Sciences."  For  his  book  was  designed  to  coordinate  and 
unify  the  theories  of  all  science  into  the  single  theory  which 
alone  gave  any  of  them  a  living  value,  namely,  the  progress 
ive  evolution  of  a  higher  organized  society  and  a  higher  in 
dividual  type.  That  this  work  would  blaze  a  wholly  new  trail 
for  a  world  of  men,  he  rarely  entertained  a  doubt.  To  its 
composition  he  gave  fifteen  actual  hours  a  day  on  Post  days, 
sixteen  hours  on  non-Post  days.  Many  men  speak  of  work 
ing  hours  like  these,  or  even  longer  ones,  but  investigation 
would  generally  show  that  all  kinds  of  restful  interludes  are 
indiscriminately  counted  in.  Queed's  hours,  you  understand, 
were  not  elapsed  time  —  they  were  absolutely  net.  He  was 
one  of  the  few  men  in  the  world  who  literally  "did  n't  have 
time." 

He  sat  in  Colonel  Cowles's  office,  scribbling  rapidly,  with 
his  eye  on  his  watch,  writing  one  of  those  unanswerable 
articles  which  were  so  much  dead  space  to  a  people's  news 
paper.  It  was  a  late  afternoon  in  early  February,  soon  after 
the  opening  of  the  legislature ;  and  he  was  alone  in  the  office. 
A  knock  fell  upon  the  door,  and  at  his  "Come,"  a  girl 


66  QUEED 

entered  who  looked  as  pretty  as  a  dewy  May  morning. 
Queed  looked  up  at  her  with  no  welcome  in  his  eye,  or 
greeting  on  his  lip,  or  spring  in  the  pregnant  hinges  of  his 
knee.  Yet  if  he  had  been  a  less  self-absorbed  young  scien 
tist,  it  must  certainly  have  dawned  on  him  that  he  had 
seen  this  lady  before. 

"Oh!  How  do  you  do!"  said  Sharlee,  for  it  was  indeed 
no  other. 

"Oh  — quite  well." 

"Miss  Leech  tells  me  that  Colonel  Cowles  has  gone  out.  I 
particularly  wished  to  see  him.  Perhaps  you  know  when  he 
will  be  back?" 

"Perhaps  in  half  an  hour.  Perhaps  in  an  hour.  I  cannot 
say." 

She  mused  disappointedly.  "I  could  hardly  wait.  Would 
you  be  good  enough  to  give  him  a  message  for  me?" 

"Very  well." 

"Well  —  just  tell  him,  please,  that  if  he  can  make  it 
convenient,  we'd  like  the  article  about  the  reformatory  to 
go  in  to-morrow,  or  the  next  day,  anyway.  He'll  under 
stand  perfectly;  I  have  talked  it  all  over  with  him.  The 
only  point  was  as  to  when  the  article  would  have  the  most 
effect,  and  we  think  the  time  has  come  now." 

"You  would  like  an  article  written  about  a  reformatory 
for  to-morrow's  Post  or  next  day's.  Very  well." 

"Thank  you  so  much  for  telling  him.   Good-afternoon." 

"  You  would  like,"  the  young  man  repeated  -  "but  one 
moment,  if  you  please.  You  have  omitted  to  inform  me  who 
you  are." 

To  his  surprise  the  lady  turned  round  with  a  gay  laugh. 
Sharlee  had  supposed  that  Mr.  Queed,  having  been  offended 
by  her,  was  deliberately  cutting  her.  That  her  identity 
had  literally  dropped  cleanly  from  his  mind  struck  her  as 
both  much  better  and  decidedly  more  amusing. 

"Don't  you  remember  me?"  she  reminded  him  once 
again,  laughing  full  at  him  from  the  threshhold.  "My  dog 
knocked  you  over  in  the  street  one  day  —  surely  you 


QUEED  67 

remember  the  pleasure-dog?  —  and  then  that  night  I  gave 
you  your  supper  at  Mrs.  Paynter's  and  afterwards  col 
lected  twenty  dollars  from  you  for  back  board.  I  am  Mrs. 
Paynter's  niece  and  my  name  is  Charlotte  Weyland." 

Weyland  ?  .  .  .  Weyland  ?  Oho !  So  this  was  the  girl  — 
sure  enough  —  that  Henry  G.  Surface  had  stripped  of  her 
fortune.  Well,  well! 

"Ah,  yes,  I  recall  you  now." 

She  thought  there  was  an  inimical  note  in  his  voice,  and 
to  pay  him  for  it,  she  said  with  a  final  smiling  nod:  "Oh, 
I  am  so  pleased!" 

Her  little  sarcasm  passed  miles  over  his  head.  She  had 
touched  the  spring  of  the  automatic  card-index  system 
known  as  his  memory  and  the  ingenious  machinery  worked 
on.'  Presently  it  pushed  out  and  laid  before  him  the  com 
plete  record,  neatly  ticketed  and  arranged,  the  full  dossier, 
of  all  that  had  passed  between  him  and  the  girl.  But  she 
was  nearly  through  the  door  before  he  had  decided  to  say: 

"I  had  another  letter  from  my  father  last  night." 

"Oh!"  she  said,  turning  at  once  —  "Did  you!" 

He  nodded,  gloomily.  "However,  there  was  not  a  cent  of 
money  in  it." 

If  he  had  racked  his  brains  for  a  subject  calculated  to 
detain  her  —  which  we  may  rely  upon  it  that  he  did  not 
do  —  he  could  not  have  hit  upon  a  surer  one.  Sharlee  Wey 
land  had  a  great  fund  of  pity  for  this  young  man's  worse 
than  fatherlessness,  and  did  not  in  the  least  mind  showing 
it.  She  came  straight  back  into  the  room  and  up  to  the  table 
where  he  sat. 

"Does  it  help  you  at  all  —  about  knowing  where  he  is,  I 
mean?" 

"Not  in  the  least.    I  wonder  what  he's  up  to  anyway?" 

He  squinted  up  at  her  interrogatively  through  his  cir 
cular  glasses,  as  though  she  ought  to  be  able  to  tell  him  if 
anybody  could.  Then  a  thought  very  much  like  that  took 
definite  shape  in  his  mind.  He  himself  had  no  time  to  give 
to  mysterious  problems  and  will-o'-the-wisp  pursuits;  his 


68  QUEED 

book  and  posterity  claimed  it  all.  This  girl  was  familiar 
with  the  city;  doubtless  knew  all  the  people;  she  seemed 
intelligent  and  capable,  as  girls  went.  He  remembered  that 
he  had  consulted  her  about  securing  remunerative  work, 
with  some  results;  possibly  she  would  also  have  something 
sensible  to  say  about  his  paternal  problem.  He  might  make 
an  even  shrewder  stroke.  As  his  landlady's  agent,  this  girl 
would  of  course  be  interested  in  establishing  his  connection 
with  a  relative  who  had  twenty-dollar  bills  to  give  away. 
Therefore  if  it  ever  should  come  to  a  search,  why  might  n't 
he  turn  the  whole  thing  over  to  the  agent  —  persuade  her 
to  hunt  his  father  for  him,  and  thus  leave  his  own  time  free 
for  the  service  of  the  race? 

"Look  here,"  said  he,  with  a  glance  at  his  watch.  "I'll 
take  a  few  minutes.  Kindly  sit  down  there  and  I'll  show 
you  how  the  man  is  behaving." 

Sharlee  sat  down  as  she  was  bidden,  close  by  his  side, 
piqued  as  to  her  curiosity,  as  well  as  flattered  by  his  royal 
condescension.  She  wore  her  business  suit,  which  was  rough 
and  blue,  with  a  smart  little  pony  coat.  She  also  wore  a 
white  veil  festooned  around  her  hat,  and  white  gloves  that 
were  quite  unspotted  from  the  world.  The  raw  February 
winds  had  whipped  roses  into  her  cheeks;  her  pure  ultra 
marine  eyes  made  the  blue  of  her  suit  look  commonplace 
and  dull.  Dusk  had  fallen  over  the  city,  and  Queed  cleverly 
bethought  him  to  snap  on  an  electric  light.  It  revealed  a 
very  shabby,  ramshackle,  and  dingy  office;  but  the  long 
table  in  it  was  new,  oaken,  and  handsome.  In  fact,  it  was 
one  of  the  repairs  introduced  by  the  new  management. 

"Here,"  said  he,  "is  his  first  letter  —  the  one  that 
brought  me  from  New  York." 

He  took  it  from  its  envelope  and  laid  it  open  on  the  table. 
A  sense  of  the  pathos  in  this  ready  sharing  of  one's  most 
intimate  secrets  with  a  stranger  took  hold  of  Sharlee  as  she 
leaned  forward  to  see  what  it  might  say. 

"Be  careful!   Your  feather  thing  is  sticking  my  eye." 

Meekly  the  girl  withdrew  to  a  safer  distance.  From  there 


QUEED  69 

she  read  with  amazement  the  six  typewritten  lines  which 
was  all  that  the  letter  proved  to  be.  They  read  thus : 

Your  father  asks  that,  if  you  have  any  of  the  natural  feelings  of  a  son, 
you  will  at  once  leave  New  York  and  take  up  your  residence  in  this  city. 
This  is  the  first  request  he  has  ever  made  of  you,  as  it  will  be,  if  you  refuse 
it,  the  last.  But  he  earnestly  begs  that  you  will  comply  with  it,  antici 
pating  that  it  will  be  to  your  decided  advantage  to  do  so. 

"The  envelope  that  that  came  in,"  said  Qtieed,  briskly 
laying  it  down.  "Now  here  's  the  envelope  that  the  twenty 
dollars  came  in  —  it  is  exactly  like  the  other  two,  you  ob 
serve.  —  The  last  exhibit  is  somewhat  remarkable;  it  came 
yesterday.  Read  that." 

Sharlee  required  no  urging.  She  read : 

Make  friends;  mingle  with  people,  and  learn  to  like  them.  This  is  the 
earnest  injunction  of 

Your  father. 

"Note  especially,"  said  the  young  man,  "the  initial 
Q  on  each  of  the  three  envelopes.  You  will  observe  that 
the  tail  in  every  instance  is  defective  in  just  the  same 
way." 

Sure  enough,  the  tail  of  every  Q  was  broken  off  short 
near  the  root,  like  the  rudimentary  tail  anatomists  find  in 
Genus  Homo.  Mr.  Queed  looked  at  her  with  scholarly 
triumph. 

"I  suppose  that  removes  all  doubt,"  said  she,"  that  all 
these  came  from  the  same  person." 

"Unquestionably.  —  Well?  What  do  they  suggest  to 
you?" 

A  circle  of  light  from  the  green-shaded  desk-lamp  beat 
down  on  the  three  singular  exhibits.  Sharlee  studied  them 
with  bewilderment  mixed  with  profound  melancholy. 

"Is  it  conceivable,"  said  she,  hesitatingly — "I  only 
suggest  this  because  the  whole  thing  seems  so  extraordin 
ary  —  that  somebody  is  playing  a  very  foolish  joke  on 
you?" 


70  QUEED 

He  stared.  "Who  on  earth  would  wish  to  joke  with 
me?" 

Of  course  he  had  her  there.  "  I  wish,"  she  said,  "  that  you 
would  tell  me  what  you  yourself  think  of  them." 

' '  I  think  that  my  father  must  be  very  hard  up  for  some 
thing  to  do." 

"Oh  —  I  don't  think  I  should  speak  of  it  in  that  way  if 
I  were  you." 

"Why  not?  If  he  cites  filial  duty  to  me,  why  shall  I  not 
cite  paternal  duty  to  him?  Why  should  he  confine  his  entire 
relations  with  me  in  twenty-four  years  to  two  preposterous 
detective-story  letters?" 

Sharlee  said  nothing.  To  tell  the  truth,  she  thought  the 
behavior  of  Queed  Senior  puzzling  in  the  last  degree. 

"You  grasp  the  situation?  He  knows  exactly  where  I  am; 
evidently  he  has  known  it  all  along.  He  could  come  to  see 
me  to-night;  he  could  have  come  as  soon  as  I  arrived  here 
three  months  ago;  he  could  have  come  five,  ten,  twenty 
years  ago,  when  I  was  in  New  York.  But  instead  he  elects 
to  write  these  curious  letters,  apparently  seeking  to  make  a 
mystery,  and  throwing  the  burden  of  finding  him  on  me. 
Why  should  I  become  excited  over  the  prospect?  If  he 
would  promise  to  endow  me  now,  to  support  or  pension  me 
off,  if  I  found  him,  that  would  be  one  thing.  But  I  submit 
to  you  that  no  man  can  be  expected  to  interrupt  a  most 
important  life-work  in  consideration  of  a  single  twenty- 
dollar  bill.  And  that  is  the  only  proof  of  interest  I  ever  had 
from  him.  No — "  he  broke  off  suddenly — "no,  that's 
hardly  true  after  all.  I  suppose  it  was  he  who  sent  the  money 
to  Tim." 

"To  Tim?" 

"Tim  Queed." 

Presently  she  gently  prodded  him.  "And  do  you  want 
to  tell  me  who  Tim  Queed  is?" 

He  eyed  her  thoughtfully.  If  the  ground  of  his  talk 
appeared  somewhat  delicate,  nothing  could  have  been  more 
matter-of-fact  than  the  way  he  tramped  it.  Yet  now  he 


QUEED  7r 

palpably  paused  to  ask  himself  whether  it  was  worth  his 
while  to  go  more  into  detail.  Yes;  clearly  it  was.  If  it 
ever  became  necessary  to  ask  the  boarding-house  agent  to 
find  his  father  for  him,  she  would  have  to  know  what  the 
situation  was,  and  now  was  the  time  to  make  it  plain  to  her 
once  and  for  all. 

"He  is  the  man  I  lived  with  till  I  was  fourteen;  one  of  my 
friends,  a  policeman.  For  a  long  time  I  supposed,  of  course, 
that  Tim  was  my  father,  but  when  I  was  ten  or  twelve,  he 
told  me,  first  that  I  was  an  orphan  who  had  been  left  with 
him  to  bring  up,  and  later  on,  that  I  had  a  father  somewhere 
who  was  not  in  a  position  to  bring  up  children.  That  was  all 
he  would  ever  say  about  it.  I  became  a  student  while  still 
a  little  boy,  having  educated  myself  practically  without 
instruction  of  any  sort,  and  when  I  was  fourteen  I  left  Tim 
because  he  married  at  that  time,  and,  with  the  quarrel 
ing  and  drinking  that  followed,  the  house  became  unbear 
able.  Tim  then  told  me  for  the  first  time  that  he  had, 
from  some  source,  funds  equivalent  to  twenty-five  dol 
lars  a  month  for  my  board,  and  that  he  would  allow  me 
fifteen  of  that,  keeping  ten  dollars  a  month  for  his  services 
as  agent.  You  follow  all  this  perfectly?  So  matters  went 
along  for  ten  years,  Tim  bringing  me  the  fifteen  dollars 
every  month  and  coming  frequently  to  see  me  in  between, 
often  bringing  along  his  brother  Murphy,  who  is  a  yegg- 
man.  Last  fall  came  this  letter,  purporting  to  be  from  my 
father.  Absurd  as  it  appeared  to  me,  I  decided  to  come. 
Tim  said  that,  in  that  case,  he  would  be  compelled  to  cut 
off  the  allowance  entirely.  Nevertheless,  I  came." 

Sharlee  had  listened  to  this  autobiographical  sketch 
with  close  and  sympathetic  attention.  "And  now  that  you 
are  here  —  and  settled  —  have  n't  you  decided  to  do  some 
thing—?" 

He  leaned  back  in  his  swivel  chair  and  stared  at  her. 
"Do  something!  Have  n't  I  done  all  that  he  asked?  Have 
n't  I  given  up  fifteen  dollars  a  month  for  him?  Decidedly, 
the  next  move  is  his." 


72  QUEED 

"But  if  you  meant  to  take  no  steps  when  you  got  here, 
why  did  you  come?" 

"To  give  him  his  chance,  of  course.  One  city  is  exactly 
like  another  to  me.  All  that  I  ask  of  any  of  them  is  a  table 
and  silence.  Apart  from  the  forfeiture  of  my  income,  living 
here  and  living  there  are  all  one.  Do !  You  talk  of  it  glibly 
enough,  but  what  is  there  to  do?  There  are  no  Queeds  in 
this  city.  I  looked  in  the  directory  this  morning.  In  all 
probability  that  is  not  his  name  anyway.  Kindly  bear  in 
mind  that  I  have  not  the  smallest  clue  to  proceed  upon, 
even  had  I  the  time  and  willingness  to  proceed  upon  it." 

"I  am  obliged  to  agree  with  you,"  she  said,  "in  thinking 
that  your — " 

"Besides,"  continued  Doctor  Queed,  "what  reason  have 
I  for  thinking  that  he  expects  or  desires  me  to  track  him 
down?  For  all  that  he  says  here,  that  may  be  the  last  thing 
in  the  world  he  wishes." 

Sharlee,  turning  toward  him,  her  chin  in  her  white-gloved 
hand,  looked  at  him  earnestly. 

"Do  you  care  to  have  me  discuss  it  with  you?" 

"Oh,  yes,  I  have  invited  an  expression  of  opinion  from 
you." 

"Then  I  agree  with  you  in  thinking  that  your  father  is 
not  treating  you  fairly.  His  attitude  toward  you  is  extraor 
dinary,  to  say  the  least  of  it.  But  of  course  there  must  be 
some  good  reason  for  this.  Has  it  occurred  to  you  that  he 
may  be  in  some  —  situation  where  it  is  not  possible  for 
him  to  reveal  himself  to  you?" 

"Such  as  what?" 

"Well,  I  don't  know— " 

"Why  does  n't  he  say  so  plainly  in  his  letters  then?" 

"I  don't  know." 

The  young  man  threw  out  his  hands  with  a  gesture  which 
inquired  what  in  the  mischief  she  was  talking  about  then. 

"Here  is  another  thought,"  said  Sharlee,  not  at  all  dis 
concerted.  "Have  you  considered  that  possibly  he  may  be 
doing  this  way  —  as  a  test?" 


QUEED  73 

" Test  of  what?" 

"Of  you.  I  mean  that,  wanting  to  —  to  have  you  with 
him  now,  he  is  taking  this  way  of  finding  out  whether  or  not 
you  want  him.  Don't  you  see  what  I  mean?  He  appeals 
here  to  the  natural  feelings  of  a  son,  and  then  again  he  tells 
you  to  make  friends  and  learn  to  like  people.  Evidently  he 
is  expecting  something  of  you  —  I  don't  know  exactly  what. 
But  don't  you  think,  perhaps,  that  if  you  began  a  search 
for  him,  he  would  take  it  as  a  sign  — " 

"I  told  you  that  there  was  no  way  in  which  a  search,  as 
you  call  it,  could  be  begun.  Nor,  if  there  were,  have  I  the 
smallest  inclination  to  begin  it.  Nor,  again,  if  I  had,  could 
I  possibly  take  the  time  from  My  Book." 

She  was  silent  a  moment.  "There  is,  of  course,  one  way 
in  which  you  could  find  out  at  any  moment." 

"Indeed!  What  is  that,  pray?" 

"Mr.  TimQueed." 

He  smiled  faintly  but  derisively.  "Hardly.  Of  course 
Tim  knows  all  about  it.  He  told  me  once  that  he  was 
present  at  the  wedding  of  my  parents;  another  time  that 
my  mother  died  when  I  was  born.  But  he  would  add,  and 
will  add,  not  a  word  to  these  confidences;  not  even  to  assure 
me  definitely  that  my  father  is  still  alive.  He  says  that  he 
has  sworn  an  oath  of  secrecy.  I  called  on  him  before  I  left 
New  York.  No,  no;  I  may  discover  my  father  or  he  may 
discover  me,  or  not,  but  we  can  rest  absolutely  assured  that 
I  shall  get  no  help  from  Tim." 

"But  you  can't  mean  simply  to  sit  still  — " 

"And  leave  matters  to  him.    I  do." 

"But  —  but,"  she  still  protested,  "he  is  evidently  un 
happy,  Mr.  Queed  —  evidently  counting  on  you  for  some 
thing—" 

"Then  let  him  come  out  like  a  man  and  say  plainly  what 
he  wants.  I  cannot  possibly  drop  my  work  to  try  to  solve 
entirely  superfluous  enigmas.  Keep  all  this  in  mind  — • 
take  an  interest  in  it,  will  you?"  he  added  briskly.  "Pos 
sibly  I  might  need  your  help  some  day." 


74  QUEED 

"Certainly  I  will.  I  appreciate  your  telling  me  about  it; 
and  I  'd  be  so  glad  to  help  you  in  any  way  that  I  could." 

"How  do  you  like  my  editorials?"  he  demanded  ab 
ruptly. 

"I'm  afraid  I  don't  understand  a  line  of  them!" 

He  waved  his  hand  indulgently,  like  a  grandfather 
receiving  the  just  tribute  of  his  little  ones.  "They  are  for 
thinkers,  experts,"  said  he,  and  picked  up  his  pencil. 

The  agent  took  the  hint ;  pushed  back  her  chair ;  her  glove 
was  unbuttoned  and  she  slowly  fastened  it.  In  her  heart 
was  a  great  compassion  for  the  little  Doctor. 

"Mr.  Queed,  I  want  you  to  know  that  if  I  ever  could  be 
of  help  to  you  about  anything,  I  'd  always  think  it  a  real 
pleasure.  Please  remember  that,  won't  you?  Did  you  know 
I  lived  down  this  way,  in  the  daytime?" 

"Lived?" 

She  made  a  gesture  toward  the  window,  and  away  to  the 
south  and  east.  "My  office  is  only  three  blocks  away, 
down  there  in  the  park  — " 

"Your  office?  You  don't  work!" 

"Oh,  don't  I  though!" 

"Why,  I  thought  you  were  a  lady!" 

They  were  so  close  together  that  she  was  compelled  to 
laugh  full  in  his  face,  disclosing  two  rows  of  splendid  little 
teeth  and  the  tip  of  a  rosy  little  tongue.  Probably  she  could 
have  crushed  him  by  another  pointing  gesture,  turned  this 
time  toward  her  honored  great-grandfather  who  stood  in 
marble  in  the  square;  but  what  was  the  use? 

"What  are  you  laughing  at?"  he  inquired  mildly. 

"At  your  definition  of  a  lady.  Where  on  earth  did  you  get 
it?  Out  of  those  laws  of  human  society  you  write  every 
night  at  my  aunt's?" 

"No,"  said  he,  the  careful  scientist  at  once,  "  no,  I  admit, 
if  you  like,  that  I  used  the  term  in  a  loose,  popular  sense.  I 
would  not  seriously  contend  that  females  of  gentle  birth 
and  breeding  —  ladies  in  the  essential  sense  —  are  never 
engaged  in  gainful  occupations  — " 


QUEED  75 

"You  should  n't,"  she  laughed,  "not  in  this  city  at  any 
rate.  It  might  astonish  you  to  know  how  many  females  of 
gentle  birth  and  breeding  are  engaged  in  gainful  occupations 
on  this  one  block  alone.  It  was  not  ever  thus  with  them. 
Once  they  had  wealth  and  engaged  in  nothing  but  delicious 
leisure.  But  in  '1861  some  men  came  down  here,  about  six 
to  one,  and  took  all  this  wealth  away  from  them,  at  the  same 
time  exterminating  the  males.  Result:  the  females,  ladies 
in  the  essential  sense,  must  either  become  gainful  or  starve. 
They  have  not  starved.  Sociologically,  it's  interesting. 
Make  Colonel  Cowles  tell  you  about  it  some  time." 

"He  has  told  me  about  it.  In  fact  he  tells  me  constantly. 
And  this  work  that  you  do,"  he  said,  not  unkindly  and  not 
without  interest,  "what  is  it?  Are  you  a  teacher,  perhaps, 
a  .  .  .  no  !  —  You  speak  of  an  office.  You  are  a  clerk, 
doubtless,  a  bookkeeper,  a  stenographer,  an  office  girl?" 

She  nodded  with  exaggerated  gravity.  "You  have  guessed 
my  secret.  I  am  a  clerk,  bookkeeper,  stenographer,  and 
office  girl.  My  official  title,  of  course,  is  a  little  more  frilly, 
but  you  describe  — " 

"Well?  What  is  it?" 

"They  call  it  Assistant  Secretary  of  the  State  Department 
of  Charities." 

He  looked  astonished ;  she  had  no  idea  his  face  could  take 
on  so  much  expression. 

"You!  You!  Why,  how  on  earth  did  you  get  such  a 
position  ?  " 

"Pull,"  said  Sharlee. 

Their  eyes  met,  and  she  laughed  him  down. 

"Who  is  the  real  Secretary  to  whom  you  are  assistant?" 

"The  nicest  man  in  the  world.  Mr.  Dayne  —  Rev. 
George  Dayne." 

"A  parson!  Does  he  know  anything  about  his  subject? 
Is  he  an  expert?  —  a  trained  relief  worker?  Does  he  know 
Willoughby?  And  Smathers?  And  Conant?" 

"Knows  them  by  heart.  Quotes  pages  of  them  at  a  time 
in  his  letters  without  ever  glancing  at  the  books." 

"And  you?" 


76  QUEED 

"I  may  claim  some  familiarity  with  their  theories." 

He  fussed  with  his  pencil.  "I  recall  defining  .sociology  for 
you  one  night  at  my  boarding-house.  ..." 

"I  remember." 

"Well,"  said  he,  determined  to  find  something  wrong, 
"those  men  whom  I  mentioned  to  you  are  not  so  good  as 
they  think,  particularly  Smathers.  I  may  as  well  tell  you 
that  I  shall  show  Smathers  up  completely  in  my  book." 

"We  shall  examine  your  arguments  with  care  and  atten 
tion.  We  leave  no  stone  unturned  to  keep  abreast  of  the 
best  modern  thought." 

"It  is  extraordinary  that  such  a  position  should  be  held 
by  a  girl  like  you,  who  can  have  no  scientific  knowledge  of 
the  many  complex  problems.  .  .  .  However,"  he  said,  a 
ray  of  brightness  lightening  his  displeasure,  "your  State  is 
notoriously  backward  in  this  field.  Your  department,  I 
fancy,  can  hardly  be  more  than  rudimentary." 

"It  will  be  much,  much  more  than  that  in  another  year 
or  two.  Why,  we're  only  four  years  old!" 

"So  this  is  why  you  are  interested  in  having  editorials 
written  about  reformatories.  It  is  a  reformatory  for  women 
that  you  wish  to  establish?" 

"How  did  you  know?" 

"I  merely  argue  from  the  fact  that  your  State  is  so 
often  held  up  to  reproach  for  lack  of  one.  What  is  the 
plan?" 

"We  are  asking,"  said  the  Assistant  Secretary,  "for  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  —  sixty  thousand  to  buy  the 
land  and  build,  forty  thousand  for  equipment  and  two 
years'  support.  Modest  enough,  is  it  not?  Of  course 
we  shall  not  get  a  penny  from  the  present  legislature. 
Legislatures  love  to  say  no;  it  dearly  flatters  their  little 
vanity.  We  are  giving  them  the  chance  to  say  no  now. 
Then  when  they  meet  again,  two  years  from  now,  we  trust 
that  they  will  be  ready  to  give  us  what  we  ask  —  part  of 
it,  at  any  rate.  We  can  make  a  start  with  seventy-five 
thousand  dollars." 


QUEED  77 

Queed  was  moved  to  magnanimity.  "Look  here.  You 
have  been  civil  to  me  —  I  will  write  that  article  for  you 
Myself." 

While  Sharlee  had  become  aware  that  the  little  Doctor 
was  interested,  really  interested,  in  talking  social  science 
with  her,  she  thought  he  must  be  crazy  to  offer  such  a  contri 
bution  of  his  time.  A  guilty  pink  stole  into  her  cheek.  A  re 
formatory  article  by  Mr.  Queed  would  doubtless  be  scien 
tifically  pluperfect,  but  nobody  would  read  it.  Colonel 
Cowles,  on  the  other  hand,  had  never  even  heard  of  Wil- 
loughby  and  Smathers;  but  when  he  wrote  an  article  people 
read  it,  and  the  humblest  understood  exactly  what  he  was 
driving  at. 

"Why — it's  very  nice  of  you  to  offer  to  help  us,  but  I 
could  n't  think  of  imposing  on  your  time  — " 

"  Naturally  not,"  said  he,  decisively;  "but  it  happens  that 
we  have  decided  to  allow  a  breathing-space  in  my  series  on 
taxation,  that  the  public  may  digest  what  I  have  already 
written.  I  am  therefore  free  to  discuss  other  topics  for  a 
few  days.  For  to-morrow's  issue,  I  am  analyzing  certain 
little  understood  industrial  problems  in  Bavaria.  On  the 
following  day  — " 

"It's  awfully  good  of  you  to  think  of  it,"  said  Sharlee, 
embarrassed  by  his  grave  gaze.  "I  can't  tell  you  how  I 
appreciate  it.  But  —  but  —  you  see,  there 's  a  lot  of  special 
detail  that  applies  to  this  particular  case  alone  —  oh,  a 
great  lot  of  it  —  little  facts  connected  with  peculiar  State 
conditions  and  —  and  the  history  of  our  department,  you 
know  —  and  I  have  talked  it  over  so  thoroughly  with  the 
Colonel—" 

"Here  is  Colonel  Cowles  now." 

She  breathed  a  sigh.  Colonel  Cowles,  entering  with  the 
breath  of  winter  upon  him,  greeted  her  affectionately. 
Queed,  rather  relieved  that  his  too  hasty  offer  had  not  been 
accepted,  noted  with  vexation  that  his  conversation  with 
the  agent  had  cost  him  eighteen  minutes  of  time.  Vigor 
ously  he  readdressed  himself  to  the  currency  problems  of 


78  QUEED 

the  Bavarians;  the  girl's  good-night,  as  applied  to  him,  fell 
upon  ears  deafer  than  any  post. 

Sharlee  walked  home  through  the  tingling  twilight ;  four 
teen  blocks,  and  she  did  them  four  times  a  day.  It  was  a 
still  evening,  clear  as  a  bell  and  very  cold;  already  stars 
were  pushing  through  the  dim  velvet  round;  all  the  world 
lay  white  with  a  light  hard  snow,  crusted  and  sparkling 
under  the  street  lights.  Her  private  fear  about  the  whole 
matter  was  that  Queed  Senior  was  a  person  of  a  criminal 
mode  of  life,  who,  discovering  the  need  of  a  young  helper, 
was  somehow  preparing  to  sound  and  size  up  his  long- 
neglected  son. 


VII 

In  which  an  Assistant  Editor,  experiencing  the  Common  De 
sire  to  thrash  a  Proof-Reader,  makes  a  Humiliating  Discov 
ery;  and  of  how  Trainer  Klinker  gets  a  Pupil  the  Same 
Evening. 

THE  industrial  problems  of  the  Bavarians  seemed  an 
inoffensive  thesis  enough,  but  who  can  evade  Des 
tiny? 

Queed  never  read  his  own  articles  when  they  appeared 
in  print  in  the  Post.  In  this  peculiarity  he  may  be  said  to 
have  resembled  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  with  the  exception 
of  the  Secretary  of  the  Tax  Reform  League,  and  the  Assist 
ant  Secretary  of  the  State  Department  of  Charities.  But 
not  by  any  such  device,  either,  can  a  man  elude  his  Fate. 
On  the  day  following  his  conversation  with  Mrs.  Paynter's 
agent,  Fortune  gave  Queed  to  hear  a  portion  of  his  article 
on  the  Bavarians  read  aloud,  and  read  with  derisive  laugh 
ter. 

The  incident  occurred  on  a  street-car,  which  he  had  taken 
because  of  the  heavy  snow-fall:  another  illustration  of  the 
tiny  instruments  with  which  Providence  works  out  its 
momentous  designs.  Had  he  not  taken  the  car  —  he  was 
on  the  point  of  not  taking  it,  when  one  whizzed  invitingly 
up  —  he  would  never  have  heard  of  the  insult  that  the  Post's 
linotype  had  put  upon  him,  and  the  course  of  his  life  might 
have  been  different.  As  it  was,  two  men  on  the  next  seat 
in  front  were  reading  the  Post  and  making  merry. 

"  .  .  .  1A  lengthy  procession  of  fleas  harassed  the  diet.1 
Now  what  in  the  name  of  Bob  ..." 

Gradually  the  sentence  worked  its  way  into  the  closed 
fastness  of  the  young  man's  mind.  It  had  a  horrible  famili 
arity,  .like  a  ghastly  parody  on  something  known  and  dear. 


8o  QUEED 

With  a  quick  movement  he  leaned  forward,  peering  over 
the  shoulder  of  the  man  who  held  the  paper. 

The  man  looked  around,  surprised  and  annoyed  by  the 
strange  face  breaking  in  so  close  to  his  own,  but  Queed 
paid  no  attention  to  him.  Yes  ...  it  was  his  article  they 
were  mocking  at  —  HIS  article.  He  remembered  the  pas 
sage  perfectly.  He  had  written:  "A  lengthy  procession  of 
pleas  harassed  the  Diet."  His  trained  eye  swept  rapidly 
down  the  half  column  of  print.  There  it  was!  "A  proces 
sion  of  fleas."  In  his  article!  Fleas,  unclean,  odious  vermin, 
in  His  Article! 

Relatively,  Queed  cared  nothing  about  his  work  on  the 
Post,  but  for  all  the  children  of  his  brain,  even  the  smallest 
and  feeblest,  he  had  a  peculiar  tenderness.  He  was  more 
jealous  of  them  than  a  knight  of  his  honor,  or  a  beauty  of 
her  complexion.  No  insult  to  his  character  could  have 
enraged  him  like  a  slight  put  upon  the  least  of  these  his 
articles.  He  sat  back  in  his  seat,  feeling  white,  and  some 
thing  clicked  inside  his  head.  He  remembered  having  heard 
that  click  once  before.  It  was  the  night  he  determined 
to  evolve  the  final  theory  of  social  progress,  which  would  wipe 
out  all  other  theories  as  the  steam  locomotive  had  wiped 
out  the  prairie  schooner. 

He  knew  well  enough  what  that  click  meant  now.  He 
had  got  a  new  purpose,  and  that  was  to  exact  personal 
reparation  from  the  criminal  who  had  made  Him  and  His 
Work  the  butt  of  street-car  loafers.  Never,  it  seemed  to 
him,  could  he  feel  clean  again  until  he  had  wiped  off  those 
fleas  with  gore. 

To  his  grim  inquiry  Colonel  Cowles  replied  that  the  head 
proof-reader,  Mr.  Pat,  was  responsible  for  typographical 
errors,  and  Mr.  Pat  did  not  "come  on "  till  6.30.  It  was  now 
but  5.50.  Queed  sat  down,  wrote  his  next  day's  article  and 
handed  it  to  the  Colonel,  who  read  the  title  and  coughed. 

"  I  shall  require  no  article  from  you  to-morrow  or  next 
day.  On  the  following  day"  —  here  the  Colonel  opened  a 
drawer  and  consulted  a  schedule  —  "I  shall  receive  with 


QUEED  81 

pleasure  your  remarks  on  'Fundamental  Principles  of  Dis 
tribution  —  Article  Four.' " 

Queed  ascended  to  the  next  floor,  a  noisy,  discordant 
floor,  full  of  metal  tables  on  castors,  and  long  stone-topped 
tables  not  on  castors,  and  Mergenthaler  machines,  and 
slanting  desk-like  structures  holding  fonts  of  type.  Rough 
board  partitions  rose  here  and  there;  over  everything  hung 
the  deadly  scent  of  acids  from  the  engravers'  room. 

"That's  him  now,"  said  an  ink-smeared  lad,  and  nodded 
toward  a  tall,  gangling,  mustachioed  fellow  in  a  black  felt 
hat  who  had  just  come  up  the  stairs. 

Queed  marched  straight  for  the  little  cubbyhole  where 
the  proof-readers  and  copy-holders  sweated  through  their 
long  nights. 

"You  are  Mr.  Pat,  head  proof-reader  of  the  Post  ?" 

"That's  me,  sor,"  said  Mr.  Pat,  and  he  turned  with  rather 
a  sharp  glance  at  the  other's  tone. 

"What  excuse  have  you  to  offer  for  making  my  article 
ridiculous  and  me  a  common  butt?" 

"An'  who  the  divil  may  you  be,  please?" 

"I  am  Mr.  Queed,  special  editorial  writer  for  this  paper. 
Look  at  this."  He  handed  over  the  folded  Post,  with  the 
typographical  enormity  heavily  underscored  in  blue.  "What 
do  you  mean  by  falsifying  my  language  and  putting  into  my 
mouth  an  absurd  observation  about  the  most  loathsome  of 
vermin?" 

Mr.  Pat  was  at  once  chagrined  and  incensed.  He  hap 
pened,  further,  to  be  in  most  sensitive  vein  as  regards  little 
oversights  in  his  department.  His  professional  pride  was 
tortured  with  the  recollection  that,  only  three  days  before, 
he  had  permitted  the  Post  to  refer  to  old  Major  Lamar  as 
"that  immortal  veterinary,"  and  upon  the  Post's  seeking  to 
retrieve  itself  the  next  day,  at  the  Major's  insistent  demand, 
he  had  fallen  into  another  error.  The  hateful  words  had  come 
out  as  "immoral  veteran." 

"Now  look  here!"  said  he,  "there's  nothing  to  be  gained 
talking  that  way.  Ye 've  got  me —  I'll  give  ye  that!  But 


82  QTJEED 

what  do  ye  expect?  —  eighty  columns  of  type  a  night  and 
niver  a  little  harmless  slip  — ?" 

"You  must  be  taught  to  make  no  slips  with  my  articles. 
I  'm  going  to  punish  you  for  that  — " 

"What-a-at!  Say  that  agin !" 

"Stand  out  here  —  I  am  going  to  give  you  a  good  thrash 
ing.  I  shall  whip  ..." 

Another  man  would  have  laughed  heartily  and  told  the 
young  man  to  trot  away  while  the  trotting  was  good.  He 
was  nearly  half  a  foot  shorter  than  Mr.  Pat,  and  his  face 
advertised  his  unmartial  customs.  But  Mr.  Pat  had  the 
swift  fierce  passions  of  his  race;  and  it  became  to  him  an 
unendurable  thing  to  be  thus  bearded  by  a  little  spectacled 
person  in  his  own  den.  He  saw  red ;  and  out  shot  his  good 
right  arm. 

The  little  Doctor  proved  a  good  sailer,  but  bad  at  making 
a  landing.  His  course  was  arched,  smooth,  and  graceful, 
but  when  he  stopped,  he  did  it  so  bluntly  that  men  working 
two  stories  below  looked  up  to  ask  each  other  who  was  dead. 
Typesetters  left  their  machines  and  hurried  up,  fearing  that 
here  was  a  case  for  ambulance  or  undertaker.  But  they  saw 
the  fallen  editor  pick  himself  up,  with  a  face  of  stupefied 
wonder,  and  immediately  start  back  toward  the  angry  proof 
reader. 

Mr.  Pat  lowered  redly  on  his  threshhold.  "G'awn  now! 
Get  away!" 

Queed  came  to  a  halt  a  pace  away  and  stood  looking  at 
him. 

" G'awn,  I  tell  ye!  I  don't  want  no  more  of  your  foolin' ! " 

The  young  man,  arms  hanging  inoffensively  by  his  side, 
stared  at  him  with  a  curious  fixity. 

These  tactics  proved  strangely  disconcerting  to  Mr.  Pat, 
obsessed  as  he  was  by  a  sudden  sense  of  shame  at  having 
thumped  so  impotent  an  adversary. 

"  Leave  me  be,  Mr.  Queed.  I  'm  sorry  I  hit  ye,  and  I  niver 
would  'a'  done  it  —  if  ye  had  n't  — " 

The  man's  voice  died  away.     He  became  lost  in  a  great 


QUEED  83 

wonder  as  to  what  under  heaven  this  little  Four-eyes  meant 
by  standing  there  and  staring  at  him  with  that  white  and 
entirely  unfrightened  face. 

Queed  was,  in  fact,  in  the  grip  of  a  brand-new  idea,  an 
idea  so  sudden  and  staggering  that  it  overwhelmed  him. 
He  could  not  thrash  Mr.  Pat.  He  could  not  thrash  anybody. 
Anybody  in  the  world  that  desired  could  put  gross  insult 
upon  his  articles  and  go  scot-free,  the  reason  being  that  the 
father  of  these  articles  was  a  physical  incompetent. 

All  his  life  young  Mr.  Queed  had  attended  to  his  own 
business,  kept  quiet  and  avoided  trouble.  This  was  his  first 
fight,  because  it  was  the  first  time  that  anybody  had  publicly 
insulted  his  work.  In  his  whirling  sunburst  of  indignation, 
he  had  somehow  taken  it  for  granted  that  he  could  punch 
the  head  of  a  proof-reader  in  much  the  same  way  that  he 
punched  the  head  off  Smathers's  arguments.  Now  he  sud 
denly  discovered  his  mistake,  and  the  discovery  was  going 
hard  with  him.  Inside  him  there  was  raging  a  demon  of 
surprising  violence  of  deportment;  it  urged  him  to  lay  hold 
of  some  instrument  of  a  rugged,  murderous  nature  and 
assassinate  Mr.  Pat.  But  higher  up  in  him,  in  his  head, 
there  spoke  the  stronger  voice  of  his  reason.  While  the 
demon  screamed  homicidally,  reason  coldly  reminded  the 
young  man  that  not  to  save  his  life  could  he  assassinate, 
or  even  hurt,  Mr.  Pat,  and  that  the  net  result  of  another 
endeavor  to  do  so  would  be  merely  a  second  mortifying 
atmospheric  journey.  Was  it  not  unreasonable  for  a  man, 
in  a  hopeless  attempt  to  gratify  irrational  passion,  to  take  a 
step  the  sole  and  certain  consequences  of  which  would  be  a 
humiliating  soaring  and  curveting  through  the  air? 

It  was  a  terrible  struggle,  the  marks  of  which  broke  out 
on  the  young  man's  forehead  in  cold  beads.  But  he  was  a 
rationalist  among  rationalists,  and  in  the  end  his  reason 
subdued  his  demon.  Therefore,  the  little  knot  of  linotypers 
and  helpers  who  had  stood  wonderingly  by  while  the  two 
adversaries  stared  at  each  other,  through  a  tense  half- 
minute,  now  listened  to  the  following  dialogue:  — 


84  QUEED 

11 1  believe  I  said  that  I  would  give  you  a  good  thrashing. 
I  now  withdraw  those  words,  for  I  find  that  I  am  unable  to 
make  them  good." 

"I  guess  you  ain't  —  what  the  divil  did  ye  expect?  Me 
to  sit  back  with  me  hands  behind  me  and  leave  ye  — " 

"I  earnestly  desire  to  thrash  you,  but  it  is  plain  to  me 
that  I  am  not,  at  present,  in  position  to  do  so." 

"Fergit  it!  What's  afther  ye,  Mr.  Queed  — ?" 

"To  get  in  position  to  thrash  you,  would  take  me  a  year, 
two  years,  five  years.  It  is  not  —  no,  it  is  not  worth  my 
time." 

"Well,  who  asked  f'r  any  av  your  time?  But  as  f'r  that, 
I'll  give  ye  your  chance  to  get  square  — " 

"I  suppose  you  feel  yourself  free  now  to  take  all  sorts  of 
detestable  liberties  with  my  articles?" 

" Liberties  —  what's  bitin'  ye,  man?  Don't  I  read  revised 
proof  on  the  leaded  stuff  every  night,  no  matter  what  the 
rush  is?  When  did  ye  ever  before  catch  me  — ?" 

"Physically,  you  are  my  superior,  but  muscle  counts  for 
very  little  in  this  world,  my  man.  Morally,  which  is  all  that 
matters,  I  am  your  superior  —  you  know  that,  don't  you? 
Be  so  good  as  to  keep  your  disgusting  vermin  out  of  my 
articles  in  the  future." 

He  walked  away  with  a  face  which  gave  no  sign  of  his 
inner  turmoil.  Mr.  Pat  looked  after  him,  stirred  and  bewil 
dered,  and  addressed  his  friends  the  linotypers  angrily. 

"Something  loose  in  his  belfry,  as  ye  might  have  sur 
mised  from  thim  damfool  tax-drools." 

For  Mr.  Pat  was  still  another  reader  of  the  unanswerable 
articles,  he  being  paid  the  sum  of  twenty-seven  dollars  per 
week  to  peruse  everything  that  went  into  the  Post,  includ 
ing  advertisements  of  auction  sales  and  for  sealed  bids. 

Queed  returned  to  his  own  office  for  his  hat  and  coat. 
Having  heard  his  feet  upon  the  stairs,  Colonel  Cowles  called 
out:  — 

"What  was  the  rumpus  upstairs,  do  you  know?  It 
sounded  as  if  somebody  had  a  bad  fall." 


QUEED  85 

"Somebody  did  get  a  fall,  though  not  a  bad  one,  I  be< 
lieve." 

"  Who?"  queried  the  editor  briefly. 

«    T     » 

In  the  hall,  it  occurred  to  Queed  that  perhaps  he  had 
misled  his  chief  a  little,  though  speaking  the  literal  truth. 
The  fall  that  some  body  had  gotten  was  indeed  nothing 
much,  for  people's  bodies  counted  for  nothing  so  long  as 
they  kept  them  under.  But  the  fall  that  this  body's  self- 
esteem  had  gotten  was  no  such  trivial  affair.  It  struck  the 
young  man  as  decidedly  curious  that  the  worst  tumble  his 
pride  had  ever  received  had  come  to  him  through  his  body, 
that  part  of  him  which  he  had  always  treated  with  the  most 
systematic  contempt. 

The  elevator  received  him,  and  in  it,  as  luck  would  have 
it,  stood  a  tall  young  man  whom  he  knew  quite  well. 

"Hello,  there,  Doc!" 

"How  do  you  do,  Mr.  Klinker?" 

"Been  up  chinning  your  sporting  editor,  Ragsy  Hurd. 
Trying  to  arrange  a  mill  at  the  Mercury  between  Smithy 
of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  Hank  McGurk,  the  White  Plains 
Cyclone." 

"A  mill—?" 

"Scrap  —  boxin'  match,  y'  know.  Done  up  your  writings 
for  the  day?" 

"  My  newspaper  writings  —  yes." 

In  the  brilliant  close  quarters  of  the  lift,  Klinker  was 
looking  at  Mr.  Queed  narrowly.  "Where  you  hittin'  for 
now?  Paynter's?" 

"Yes." 

"Walkin'?  —  That's  right.   I'll  go  with  you." 

As  they  came  out  into  the  street,  Klinker  said  kindly: 
"You  ain't  feelin'  good,  are  you,  Doc?  You're  lookin' 
white  as  a  milk-shake." 

"I  feel  reasonably  well,  thank  you.  As  for  color,  I  have 
never  had  any,  I  believe." 

"I  don't  guess,  the   life  you  lead.   Got  the  headache, 


86  QUEED 

haven't  you?   Have  it  about  half  the  time,  now  don't  you, 
hey?" 

"Oh,  I  have  a  headache  quite  frequently,  but  I  never  pay 
any  attention  to  it." 

"Well,  you'd  ought  to.  Don't  you  know  the  headache 
is  just  nature  tipping  you  off  there's  something  wrong  in 
side?  I've  been  watching  you  at  the  supper  table  for  some 
time  now.  That  pallor  you  got  ain't  natural  pallor.  You  're 
pasty,  that's  right.  I'll  bet  segars  you  wake  up  three 
mornings  out  of  four  feelin'  like  a  dish  of  stewed  prunes." 

"  If  I  do  —  though  of  course  I  can  only  infer  how  such 
a  dish  feels  —  it  is  really  of  no  consequence,  I  assure 
you." 

"Don't  you  fool  yourself!  It  makes  a  lot  of  consequence 
to  you.  Ask  a  doctor,  if  you  don't  believe  me.  But  I  got 
your  dia'nosis  now,  same  as  a  medical  man  —  that 's  right. 
I  know  what's  your  trouble,  Doc,  just  like  you  had  told  me 
yourself." 

"Ah?   What,  Mr.  Klinker?" 

"Exercise." 

"You  mean  lack  of  exercise?" 

"  I  mean,"  said  Klinker,  "  that  you  're  fadin'  out  fast  for 
the  need  of  it." 

The  two  men  pushed  on  up  Centre  Street,  where  the  march 
of  home-goers  was  now  beginning  to  thin  out,  in  a  moment 
of  silence.  Queed  glanced  up  at  Klinker's  six  feet  of  red 
beef  with  a  flash  of  envy  which  would  have  been  unimagin 
able  to  him  so  short  a  while  ago  as  ten  minutes.  Klinker 
was  physically  competent.  Nobody  could  insult  his  work 
and  laugh  at  the  merited  retribution. 

"  Come  by  my  place  a  minute,"  said  Klinker.  "  I  got  some 
thing  to  show  you  there.  You  know  the  shop,  o'  course?" 

No;  Mr.  Queed  was  obliged  to  admit  that  he  did  not. 

"I'm  manager  for  Stark's,"  said  Klinker,  trying  not  to 
appear  boastful.  "Cigars,  mineral  waters,  and  periodicals. 
And  a  great  rondy-vooze  for  the  sporting  men,  politicians, 
and  rounders  of  the  town,  if  I  do  say  it.  I  've  seen  you  hit 


QUEED  87 

by  the  window  many  's  the  time,  only  your  head  was  so  full 
of  studies  you  never  noticed." 

"Thank  you,  I  have  no  time  this  evening,  I  fear  — " 

"Time?  It  won't  take  any  —  it's  right  the  end  of  this 
block.  You  can't  do  any  studyin'  before  supper-time,  any 
how,  because  it 's  near  that  now.  I  got  something  for  you 
there." 

They  turned  into  Stark's,  a  brilliantly-lit  and  prettily 
appointed  little  shop  with  a  big  soda-water  plant  at  the 
front.  To  a  white-coated  boy  who  lounged  upon  the  fount, 
Klinker  spoke  winged  words,  and  the  next  moment  Queed 
found  himself  drinking  a  foaming,  tingling,  hair-trigger 
.concoction  under  orders  to  put  it  all  down  at  a  gulp. 

They  were  seated  upon  a  bench  of  oak  and  leather  uphol 
stery,  with  an  enormous  mirror  reproducing  their  back  views 
to  all  who  cared  to  see.  Klinker  was  chewing  a  toothpick; 
and  either  a  toothpick  lasted  him  a  long  time,  or  the  number 
he  made  away  with  in  a  year  was  simply  stupendous. 

"Ever  see  a  gymnasier,  Doc?" 

No;  it  seemed  that  the  Doc  had  not. 

"We  got  one  here.  There's  a  big  spare  room  behind  the 
Bhop.  Kind  of  a  store-room  it  was,  and  the  Mercuries  have 
fitted  it  up  as  a  gymnasier  and  athletic  club.  Only  they're 
dead  ones  and  don't  use  it  much  no  more.  Got  kind  of  a 
fall  this  afternoon,  did  n't  you,  Doc?" 

"What  makes  you  think  that?" 

"That  eye  you  got.  She'll  be  a  beaut  to-morrow  — 
skin 's  broke  too.  A  bit  of  nice  raw  beefsteak  clapped  on  it 
right  now  would  do  the  world  and  all  for  it." 

"Oh,  it  is  of  no  consequence  — " 

"You  think  nothing  about  your  body  is  consequence, 
Doc,  that  only  your  mind  counts,  and  that's  just  where 
you  make  your  mistake.  Your  body's  got  to  carry  your 
mind  around,  and  if  it  lays  down  on  you,  what  — " 

"But  I  have  no  intention  of  letting  my  body  lie  down 
on  me,  as  you  put  it,  Mr.  Klinker.  My  health  is  sound,  my 
constitution  — " 


88  QUEED 

"Forget  it,  Doc.  Can't  I  look  at  you  and  see  with  rny 
own  eyes?  You're  committing  slow  suicide  by  over- work. 
That's  what  it  is." 

"As  it  happens,  I  am  doing  nothing  of  the  sort.  I  have 
been  working  exactly  this  way  for  twelve  years." 

"Then  all  the  bigger  is  the  overdue  bill  nature's  got 
against  you,  and  when  she  does  hit  you  she'll  hit  to  kill. 
Where  '11  your  mind  and  your  studies  be  when  we  've  planted 
your  body  down  under  the  sod?" 

Mr.  Queed  made  no  reply.  After  a  moment,  preparing 
to  rise,  he  said:  "I  am  obliged  to  you  for  that  drink.  It  is 
rather  remarkable  — " 

"Headache  all  gone,  hey?" 

"Almost  entirely.  I  wish  you  would  give  me  the  name  of 
the  medicine.  I  will  make  a  memorandum  — " 

"Nix, "said  Klinker. 

"Nix?   Nux  I  have  heard  of,  but  .  .  ." 

"Hold  on,"  laughed  Klinker,  as  he  saw  Queed  preparing 
to  enter  Nix  in  his  note-book.  "That  ain't  the  name  of  it, 
and  I  ain't  going  to  give  it  to  you.  Why,  that  slop  only 
covers  up  the  trouble,  Doc  —  does  more  harm  than  good 
in  the  long  run.  You  got  to  go  deeper  and  take  away  the 
cause.  Come  back  here  and  I  '11  show  you  your  real  med 
icine." 

" I'm  afraid— " 

"Aw,  don't  flash  that  open-faced  clock  of  yours  on  me. 
That 's  your  trouble,  Doc  —  matching  seconds  against  your 
studies.  It  won't  take  a  minute,  and  you  can  catch  it  up 
eating  supper  faster  if  you  feel  you  got  to." 

Queed,  curious,  as  well  as  decidedly  impressed  by  Klink 
er 's  sure  knowledge  in  a  field  where  he  was  totally  ignorant, 
was  persuaded.  The  two  groped  their  way  down  a  long  dark 
passage  at  the  rear  of  the  shop,  and  into  a  large  room  like 
a  cavern.  Klinker  lit  a  flaring  gas-jet  and  made  a  gesture. 

"The  Mercury  Athletic  Club  gymnasier  and  sporting- 
room." 

It  was  a  basement  room,  with  two  iron-grated  windows 


QUEED  89 

at  the  back.  Two  walls  were  lined  with  stout  shelves, 
partially  filled  with  boxes.  The  remaining  space,  including 
wall-space,  was  occupied  by  the  most  curious  and  puzzling 
contrivances  that  Queed  had  ever  seen.  Out  of  the  glut  of 
enigmas  there  was  but  one  thing  —  a  large  mattress  upon 
the  floor  —  that  he  could  recognize  without  a  diagram. 

"Your  caretaker  sleeps  here,  I  perceive." 

Klinker  laughed.  "Look  around  you,  Doc.  Take  a  good 
gaze." 

Doc  obeyed.  Klinker  picked  up  a  "sneaker"  from  the 
floor  and  hurled  it  with  deadly  precision  at  a  weight-and- 
pulley  across  the  room. 

"There's  your  medicine,  Doc!" 

Orange-stick  in  mouth,  he  went  around  like  a  museum 
guide,  introducing  the  beloved  apparatus  to  the  visitor 
under  its  true  names  and  uses,  the  chest- weights,  dumb 
bells  and  Indian  clubs,  flying-rings,  a  rowing-machine,  the 
horizontal  and  parallel  bars,  the  punching-bag  and  trapeze. 
Klinker  lingered  over  the  ceremonial;  it  was  plain  that  the 
gymnasier  was  very  dear  to  him.  In  fact,  he  loved  every 
thing  pertaining  to  bodily  exercise  and  manly  sport;  he 
caressed  a  boxing-glove  as  he  never  caressed  a  lady's  hand ; 
the  smell  of  witch-hazel  on  a  hard  bare  limb  was  more  titil 
lating  to  him  than  any  intoxicant.  The  introduction  over, 
Klinker  sat  down  tenderly  on  the  polished  seat  of  the  rowing- 
machine,  and  addressed  Doctor  Queed,  who  stood  with  an 
academic  arm  thrown  gingerly  over  the  horizontal  bar. 

"There's  your  medicine,  Doc.  And  if  you  don't  take  it  — 
well,  it  may  be  the  long  good-by  for  yours  before  the  flowers 
bloom  again." 

"How  do  you  mean,  Mr.  Klinker  —  there  is  my  medicine?" 

"I  mean  you  need  half  an  hour  to  an  hour's  hardest  kind 
of  work  right  here  every  day,  reg'lar  as  meals." 

Queed  started  as  though  he  had  been  stung.  He  cleared 
his  throat  nervously. 

"No  doubt  that  would  be  beneficial  —  in  a  sense,  but  I 
cannot  afford  to  take  the  time  from  My  Book  — " 


90  QUEED 

"That's  where  you  got  it  dead  wrong.  You  can't  afford 
not  to  take  the  time.  Any  doctor '11  tell  you  the  same  as  me, 
that  you  '11  never  finish  your  book  at  all  at  the  clip  you  're 
hitting  now.  You'll  go  with  nervous  prostration,  and  it'll 
wipe  you  out  like  a  fly.  Why,  Doc,"  said  Klinker,  impress 
ively,  "you  don't  reelize  the  kind  of  life  you're  leading  — 
all  indoors  and  sede'tary  and  working  twenty  hours  a  day. 
I  come  in  pretty  late  some  nights,  but  I  never  come  so  late 
that  there  ain't  a  light  under  your  door.  A  man  can't  stand 
it,  I  tell  you,  playing  both  ends  against  the  middle  that  away. 
You  got  to  pull  up,  or  it's  out  the  door  feet  first  for  you." 

Queed  said  uneasily:  "One  important  fact  escapes  you, 
Mr.  Klinker.  I  shall  never  let  matters  progress  so  far.  When 
I  feel  my  health  giving  way  — " 

"Needn't  finish  —  heard  it  all  before.  They  think 
they  're  going  to  stop  in  time,  but  they  never  do.  Old  pros 
tration  catches  'em  first  every  crack.  You  think  an  hour  a 
day  exercise  would  be  kind  of  a  waste,  ain't  that  right? 
Kind  of  a  dead  loss  off'n  your  book  and  studies?" 

"  I  certainly  do  feel  — " 

"Well,  you're  wrong.  Listen  here.  Don't  you  feel  some 
days  as  if  mebbe  you  could  do  better  writing  and  harder 
writing  if  only  you  did  n't  feel  so  mean?" 

"Well  ...  I  will  frankly  confess  that  sometimes — " 

"Didn't  I  know  it!  Do  you  know  what,  Doc?  If  you 
knocked  out  a  little  time  for  reg'lar  exercise,  you'd  find 
when  bedtime  came,  that  you  'd  done  better  work  than  you 
ever  did  before." 

Queed  was  silent.  He  had  the  most  logical  mind  in  the 
world,  and  now  at  last  Klinker  had  produced  an  argument 
that  appealed  to  his  reason. 

"  I  '11  put  it  to  you  as  a  promise,"  said  Klinker,  eyeing  him 
earnestly.  "One  hour  a  day  exercise,  and  you  do  more  work 
in  twenty-four  hours  than  you're  doing  now,  besides  feelin' 
one  hundred  per  cent  better  all  the  time." 

Still  Queed  was  silent.   One  hour  a  day  I 

"Try  it  for  only  a  month,"  said  Klinker  the  Tempter. 


QUEED  91 

"I'll  help  you  —  glad  to  do  it  —  I  need  the  drill  myself. 
Gimme  an  hour  a  day  for  just  a  month,  and  I'll  bet  you 
the  drinks  you  would  n't  quit  after  that  for  a  hundred 
dollars." 

Queed  turned  away  from  Klinker's  honest  eyes,  and 
wrestled  the  bitter  thing  out.  Thirty  Hours  stolen  from  His 
Book  /  .  .  .  Yesterday,  even  an  hour  ago,  he  would  not  have 
considered  such  an  outrage  for  a  moment.  But  now,  driving 
him  irresistibly  toward  the  terrible  idea,  working  upon  him 
far  more  powerfully  than  his  knowledge  of  headache,  even 
than  Klinker's  promise  of  a  net  gain  in  his  working  ability, 
was  this  new  irrationally  disturbing  knowledge  that  he  was 
a  physical  incompetent.  .  .  .  If  he  had  begun  systematic 
exercise  ten  years  ago,  probably  he  could  thrash  Mr.  Pat 
to-day. 

Yet  an  hour  a  day  is  not  pried  out  of  a  sacred  schedule 
of  work  without  pains  and  anguish,  and  it  was  with  a  grim 
face  that  the  Doc  turned  back  to  William  Klinker. 

"Very  well,  Mr.  Klinker,  I  will  agree  to  make  the  experi 
ment,  tentatively  —  an  hour  a  day  for  thirty  days  only." 

"Right  for  you,  Doc!  You'll  never  be  sorry  —  take  it 
from  me." 

Klinker  was  a  brisk,  efficient  young  man.  The  old  gang 
that  had  fitted  out  the  gymnasium  had  drifted  away,  and 
the  thought  of  going  once  more  into  regular  training,  with 
a  pupil  all  his  own,  was  breath  to  his  nostrils.  He  assumed 
charge  of  the  ceded  hour  with  skilled  sureness.  Rain  or 
shine,  the  Doctor  was  to  take  half  an  hour's  hard  walking 
in  the  air  every  day,  over  and  above  the  walk  to  the  office. 
Every  afternoon  at  six  —  at  which  hour  the  managerial 
duties  at  Stark's  terminated  —  he  was  to  report  in  the  gym 
for  half  an  hour's  vigorous  work  on  the  apparatus.  This 
iron-clad  regime  was  to  go  into  effect  on  the  morrow. 

"I'll  look  at  you  stripped,"  said  Klinker,  eyeing  his  new 
pupil  thoughtfully,  "and  see  first  what  you  need.  Then  I'll 
lay  out  a  reg'lar  course  for  you  —  exercises  for  all  parts  of 
the  body.  Got  any  trunks?" 


92  QUEED 

Queed  looked  surprised.  "I  have  one  small  one  —  a 
steamer  trunk,  as  it  is  called." 

Klinker  explained  what  he  meant,  and  the  Doctor  feared 
that  his  wardrobe  contained  no  such  article. 

"Ne'mmind.  I  can  fit  you  up  with  a  pair.  Left  Hand 
Tom's  they  used  to  be,  him  that  died  of  the  scarlet  fever 
Thanksgiving.  And  say,  Doc!" 

"Well?" 

" Here's  the  first  thing  I '11  teach  you.  Never  mister  your 
sparring-partner. ' ' 

The  Doc  thought  this  out,  laboriously,  and  presently 
said:  "Very  well,  William." 

"Call  me  Buck,  the  same  as  all  the  boys." 

Klinker  came  toward  him  holding  out  an  object  made  of 
red  velveteen  about  the  size  of  a  pocket  handkerchief. 

"  Put  these  where  you  can  find  them  to-morrow.  You  can 
have  'em.  Left  Hand  Tom  's  gone  where  he  don't  need  'em 
any  more." 

"What  are  they?    What  does  one  do  with  them?" 

"They're  your  trunks.   You  wear  'em." 

"Where?   On  —  what  portion,  I  mean?" 

"They're  like  little  pants,"  said  Klinker. 

The  two  men  walked  home  together  over  the  frozen 
streets.  Queed  was  taciturn  and  depressed.  He  was  an 
noyed  by  Klinker's  presence  and  irritated  by  his  conversa 
tion;  he  wanted  nothing  in  the  world  so  much  as  to  be  let 
alone.  But  honest  Buck  Klinker  remained  unresponsive  to 
his  mood.  All  the  way  to  Mrs.  Paynter's  he  told  his  new 
pupil  grisly  stories  of  men  he  had  known  who  had  thought 
that  they  could  work  all  day  and  all  night,  and  never  take 
any  exercise.  Buck  kindly  offered  to  show  the  Doc  their 
graves. 


VIII 

Formal  Invitation  to  Fifi  to  share  Queed' s  Dining-Room  (pro 
vided  it  is  very  cold  upstairs);  and  First  Outrage  upon  the 
Sacred  Schedule  of  Hours. 

QUEED  supped  in  an  impenetrable  silence.  The 
swelling  rednesses  both  above  and  below  his  left 
eye  attracted  the  curious  attention  of  the  boarders, 
but  he  ignored  their  glances,  and  even  Klinker  forbore  to 
address  him.  The  meal  done,  he  ascended  to  his  sacred 
chamber,  but  not  alas,  to  remain. 

For  a  full  week,  the  Scriptorium  had  been  uninhabitable 
by  night,  the  hands  of  authors  growing  too  numb  there  to 
write.  On  this  night,  conditions  were  worse  than  ever;  the 
usual  valiant  essay  was  defeated  with  more  than  the  usual 
ease.  Queed  fared  back  to  his  dining-roorn,  as  was  now 
becoming  his  melancholy  habit.  And  to-night  the  necessity 
was  exceptionally  trying,  for  he  found  that  the  intrusive 
daughter  of  the  landlady  had  yet  once  again  spread  her 
mathematics  there  before  him. 

Nor  could  Fifi  this  time  claim  misunderstanding  and 
accident.  She  fully  expected  the  coming  of  Mr.  Queed,  and 
had  been  nervously  awaiting  it.  The  state  of  mind  thus 
induced  was  not  in  the  least  favorable  to  doing  algebra 
successfully  or  pleasurably.  No  amount  of  bodily  comfort 
could  compensate  Fifi  for  having  to  have  it.  But  her  mother 
had  ruled  the  situation  to-night  with  a  strong  hand  and  a 
flat  foot.  The  bedroom  was  entirely  too  cold  for  Fifi.  She 
must,  positively  must,  go  down  to  the  warm  and  comfort 
able  dining-room, — do  you  hear  me,  Fifi?  As  for  Mr. 
Queed  —  well,  if  he  made  himself  objectionable,  Sharlee 
would  simply  have  to  give  him  another  good  talking  to. 


94  QUEED 

Yet  Fifi  involuntarily  cowered  as  she  looked  up  and  mur 
mured:  "Oh  —  good  evening!" 

Mr.  Queed  bowed.  In  the  way  of  conveying  displeas 
ure,  he  had  in  all  probability  the  most  expressive  face  in 
America. 

He  passed  around  to  his  regular  place,  disposed  his  books 
and  papers,  and  placed  his  Silence  sign  in  a  fairly  conspicu 
ous  position.  This  followed  his  usual  custom.  Yet  his  man 
ner  of  making  his  arrangements  to-night  wanted  something 
of  his  ordinary  aggressive  confidence.  In  fact,  his  promise 
to  give  an  hour  a  day  to  exercise  lay  on  his  heart  like  lead, 
and  the  lumps  on  his  eye,  large  though  they  were,  did  not 
in  the  least  represent  the  dimensions  of  the  fall  he  had  re 
ceived  at  the  hands  of  Mr.  Pat. 

Fifi  was  looking  a  little  more  fragile  than  when  we  saw 
her  last,  a  little  more  thin-cheeked,  a  shade  more  ethereal- 
eyed.  Her  cough  was  quite  bad  to-night,  and  this  increased 
her  nervousness.  How  could  she  help  from  disturbing  him 
with  that  dry  tickling  going  on  right  along  in  her  throat? 
It  had  been  a  trying  day,  when  everything  seemed  to  go 
wrong  from  the  beginning.  She  had  waked  up  feeling  very 
listless  and  tired;  had  been  late  for  school;  had  been  kept 
in  for  Cicero.  In  the  afternoon  she  had  been  going  to  a  tea 
given  to  her  class  at  the  school,  but  her  mother  said  her  cold 
was  too  bad  for  her  to  go,  and  besides  she  really  felt  too  tired. 
She  had  n't  eaten  any  supper,  and  had  been  quite  cross  with 
her  mother  in  their  talk  about  the  dining-room,  which  was 
the  worst  thing  that  had  happened  at  all.  And  now  at  nine 
o'clock  she  wanted  to  go  to  bed,  but  her  algebra  would  not, 
would  not  come  right,  and  life  was  horrible,  and  she  was  unfit 
to  live  it  anyway,  and  she  wished  she  was  .  .  . 

"You  are  crying,"  stated  a  calm  young  voice  across  the 
table. 

Brought  up  with  a  cool  round  turn,  greatly  mortified, 
Fifi  thought  that  the  best  way  to  meet  the  emergency  was 
just  to  say  nothing. 

"What  is  the  matter?"  demanded  the  professorial  tones. 


QUEED  95 

"Oh,  nothing,"  she  said,  winking  back  the  tears  and  try 
ing  to  smile,  apologetically  —  "  just  silly  reasons.  I  —  I  've 
spent  an  hour  and  ten  minutes  on  a  problem  here,  and  it 
won't  come  right.  I'm  —  sorry  I  disturbed  you." 

There  was  a  brief  silence.   Mr.  Queed  cleared  his  throat. 

"You  cannot  solve  your  problem?" 

"  I  have  n't  yet"  she  sniffed  bravely,  "but  of  course  I  will 
soon.  Oh,  I  understand  it  very  well.  ..." 

She  kept  her  eyes  stoutly  fixed  upon  her  book,  which 
indicated  that  not  for  worlds  would  she  interrupt  him 
further.  Nevertheless  she  felt  his  large  spectacles  upon  her. 
And  presently  he  astonished  her  by  saying,  resignedly  — 
doubtless  he  had  decided  that  thus  could  the  virginal  calm 
be  most  surely  and  swiftly  restored: — 

"Bring  me  your  book.   I  will  solve  your  problem." 

"Oh!"  said  Fifi,  choking  down  a  cough.  And  then,  "Do 
you  know  all  about  algebra,  too?" 

It  seemed  that  Mr.  Queed  in  his  younger  days  had  once 
made  quite  a  specialty  of  mathematics,  both  lower,  like 
Fifi's,  and  also  far  higher.  The  child's  polite  demurs  were 
firmly  overridden.  Soon  she  was  established  in  a  chair  at 
his  side,  the  book  open  on  the  table  between  them. 

"Indicate  the  problem,"  said  Mr.  Queed. 

Fifi  indicated  it:  No.  71  of  the  collection  of  stickers  known 
as  Miscellaneous  Review.  It  read  as  follows : 

71.  A  laborer  having  built  105  rods  of  stone  fence,  found  that  if  he  had 
built  2  rods  less  a  day  he  would  have  been  6  days  longer  in  completing 
the  job.  How  many  rods  a  day  did  he  build  ? 

Queed  read  this  through  once  and  announced:  "He  built 
seven  rods  a  day." 

Fifi  stared.   "Why  —  how  in  the  world,  Mr  Queed  — " 

"Let  us  see  if  I  am  right.  Proceed.  Read  me  what  you 
have  written  down." 

"Let  x  equal  the  number  of  rods  he  built  each  day," 
began  Fifi  bravely. 

"Proceed." 


9b  QUEED 

"Then  105  divided  by  x  equals  number  of  days  con 
sumed.  And  105  divided  by  x—2  equals  number  of  days 
consumed,  if  he  had  built  2  rods  less  a  day." 

"Of  course." 

"And  (105 -T- x  —  2]  +  6  =  number  of  days  consumed  if  it 
had  taken  him  six  days  longer." 

"Nothing  of  the  sort." 

Fifi  coughed.    "I  don't  see  why,  exactly." 

"When  the  text  says  'six  days  longer,'  it  means  longer 
than  what?" 

"Why  —  longer  than  ever." 

"Doubtless.  But  you  must  state  it  in  terms  of  the  prob 
lem." 

"In  terms  of  the  problem,"  murmured  Fifi,  her  red-brown 
head  bowed  over  the  bewildering  book — "in  terms  of  the 
problem." 

"Of  course,"  said  her  teacher,  "there  is  but  one  thing 
which  longer  can  mean ;  that  is  longer  than  the  original  rate 
of  progress.  Yet  you  add  the  six  to  the  time  required  under 
the  new  rate  of  progress." 

"I  —  I 'm  really  afraid  I  don't  quite  see.  I 'm  dreadfully 
stupid,  I  know — " 

"Take  it  this  way  then.  You  have  set  down  here  two 
facts.  One  fact  is  the  number  of  days  necessary  under  the 
old  rate  of  progress ;  the  other  is  the  number  of  days  neces 
sary  under  the  new  rate.  Now  what  is  the  difference  between 
them?" 

"Why  —  is  n't  that  just  what  I  don't  know?" 

"I  can't  say  what  you  don't  know.  This  is  something 
that  /  know  very  well." 

"But  you  know  everything,"  she  murmured. 

Without  seeking  to  deny  this,  Queed  said:  "It  tells  you 
right  there  in  the  book." 

"  I  don't  see  it,"  said  Fifi,  nervously  looking  high  and  low, 
not  only  in  the  book  but  all  over  the  room. 

The  young  man  fell  back  on  the  inductive  method: 
"What  is  that  six  then?" 


QUEED  97 

"Oh!  Now  I  see.  It's  the  difference  in  the  number  of 
days  consumed  —  is  n't  it?  " 

"  Naturally.  Now  put  down  your  equation.  No,  no!  The 
greater  the  rate  of  progress,  the  fewer  the  number  of  days. 
Do  not  attempt  to  subtract  the  greater  from  the  less." 

Now  Fifi  figured  swimmingly: 

IQ5       I05  =  6 

X  —  2  X 

IO5  #—  IO5  #  +  2lO  =  6x2  —  12  X 

6X2  —  I2X=2IO 
6x2  —I2X  —  21  O=O 

x2-2x  —      =0 


x=7  or  -5 

She  smiled  straight  into  his  eyes,  sweetly  and  fearlessly. 
"Seven!  Just  what  you  said!  Oh,  if  I  could  only  do  them 
like  you!  I  'm  ever  and  ever  so  much  obliged,  Mr.  Queed  —  • 
and  now  I  can  go  to  bed." 

Mr.  Queed  avoided  Fifi's  smile;  he  obviously  deliberated. 

"If  you  have  any  more  of  these  terrible  difficulties,"  he 
said  slowly,  "it  is  n't  necessary  for  you  to  sit  there  all  even 
ing  and  cry  over  them.  You  .  .  .  may  ask  me  to  show 
you." 

"Oh,  could  I  really!  Thank  you  ever  so  much.  But  no,  I 
won't  be  here,  you  see.  I  did  n't  mean  to  come  to-night  — 
truly,  Mr.  Queed  —  I  know  I  bother  you  so  —  only  Mother 
made  me." 

"Your  mother  made  you?  Why?" 

"Well  —  it's  right  cold  upstairs,  you  know,"  said  Fifi, 
gathering  up  her  books,  "and  she  thought  it  might  not  be 
very  good  for  my  cough.  ..." 

Queed  glanced  impatiently  at  the  girl's  delicate  face.  A 
frown  deepened  on  his  brow;  he  cleared  his  throat  with 
annoyance. 


98  QUEED 

"Oh,  I  am  willing,"  he  said  testily,  "for  you  to  bring  your 
work  here  whenever  it  is  very  cold  upstairs." 

"Oh,  how  good  you  are,  Mr.  Queed!"  cried  Fifi,  stag 
gered  by  his  nobility.  "But  of  course  I  can't  think  of 
bothering — " 

"I  should  not  have  asked  you,"  he  interrupted  her,  irrit 
ably,  "if  I  had  not  been  willing  for  you  to  come." 

But  for  all  boarders,  their  comfort  and  convenience,  Fifi 
had  the  great  respect  which  all  of  us  feel  for  the  source  of 
our  livelihood;  and,  stammering  grateful  thanks,  she  again 
assured  him  that  she  could  not  make  such  a  nuisance  of 
herself.  However,  of  course  Mr.  Queed  had  his  way,  as  he 
always  did. 

This  point  definitely  settled,  he  picked  up  his  pencil, 
which  was  his  way  of  saying,  "And  now,  for  heaven's  sake 
—  good-night!"  But  Fifi,  her  heart  much  softened  toward 
him,  stood -her  ground,  the  pile  of  school-books  tucked  under 
her  arm. 

"  Mr.  Queed  —  I  —  wonder  if  you  won't  let  me  get  some 
thing  to  put  on  your  forehead?  That  bruise  is  so  dread 
ful—" 

"Oh,  no!  No!   It's  of  no  consequence  whatever." 

"But  I  don't  think  you  can  have  noticed  how  bad  it  is. 
Please  let  me,  Mr.  Queed.  Just  a  little  dab  of  arnica  or 
witch-hazel  — " 

"My  forehead  does  very  well  as  it  is,  I  assure  you." 

Fifi  turned  reluctantly.  "Indeed  something  on  it  would 
make  it  get  well  so  much  faster.  I  wish  you  would  — " 

Ah !  There  was  a  thought.  As  long  as  he  had  this  bruise 
people  would  be  bothering  him  about  it.  It  was  a  world 
where  a  man  could  n't  even  get  a  black  eye  without  a 
thousand  busybodies  commenting  on  it. 

"If  you  are  certain  that  its  healing  will  be  hastened  — " 

"  Positive!"  cried  Fifi  happily,  and  vanished  without  more 
speech. 

One  Hour  a  Day  to  be  given  to  Bodily  Exercise.  .  .  .  How 
long,  O  Lord,  how  long! 


QUEED  99 

Fifi  returned  directly  with  white  cloths,  scissors,  and  two 
large  bottles. 

"I  won't  take  hardly  a  minute  —  you  see!  Listen,  Mr. 
Queed.  One  of  these  bottles  heals  fairly  well  and  does  n't 
hurt  at  all  worth  mentioning.  That's  witch-hazel.  The 
other  heals  very  well  and  fast,  but  stings  —  well,  a  lot;  and 
that's  turpentine.  Which  will  you  take?" 

"The  turpentine,"  said  Mr.  Queed  in  a  martyr's  voice. 

Fifi's  hands  were  very  deft.  In  less  than  no  time,  she  made 
a  little  lint  pad,  soaked  it  in  the  pungent  turpentine,  applied 
it  to  the  unsightly  swelling,  and  bound  it  firmly  to  the  young 
man's  head  with  a  snowy  band.  In  all  of  Mr.  Queed's  life, 
this  was  the  first  time  that  a  woman  had  ministered  to  him. 
To  himself,  he  involuntarily  confessed  that  the  touch  of  the 
girl's  hands  upon  his  forehead  was  not  so  annoying  as  you 
might  have  expected. 

Fifi  drew  off  and  surveyed  her  work  sympathetically  yet 
professionally.  The  effect  of  the  white  cloth  riding  aslant 
over  the  round  glasses  and  academic  countenance  was  won 
derfully  rakish  and  devil-may-care. 

"Do  you  feel  the  sting  much  so  far?" 

"A  trifle,"  said  the  Doctor. 

"It  works  up  fast  to  a  kind  of  —  climax,  as  I  remember, 
and  then  slowly  dies  away.  The  climax  will  be  pretty  bad  — 
I  'm  so  sorry !  But  when  it 's  at  its  worst  just  say  to  yourself, 
'This  is  doing  me  lots  and  lots  of  good,'  and  then  you  won't 
mind  so  much." 

"I  will  follow  the  directions,"  said  he,  squirming  in  his 
chair. 

"Thank  you  for  letting  me  do  it,  and  for  the  algebra,  and 
—  good-night." 

"Good-night." 

He  immediately  abandoned  all  pretense  of  working.  To 
him  it  seemed  that  the  climax  of  the  turpentine  had  come 
instantly ;  there  was  no  more  working  up  about  it  than  there 
was  about  a  live  red  coal.  The  mordant  tooth  bit  into  his 
blood;  he  rose  and  tramped  the  floor,  muttering  savagely 


ioo  QUEED 

to  himself.  But  he  would  not  pluck  the  hateful  thing  off,  no, 
no  —  for  that  would  have  been  an  admission  that  he  was 
wrong  in  putting  it  on ;  and  he  was  never  wrong. 

So  Bylash,  reading  one  of  Miss  Jibby's  works  in  the  parlor, 
and  pausing  for  a  drink  of  water  at  the  end  of  a  glorious 
chapter,  found  him  tramping  and  muttering.  His  flying 
look  dared  Bylash  to  address  him,  and  Bylash  prudently 
took  the  dare.  But  he  poured  his  drink  slowly,  stealing 
curious  glances  and  endeavoring  to  catch  the  drift  of  the 
little  Doctor's  murmurings. 

In  this  attempt  he  utterly  failed,  because  why?  Obviously 
because  the  Doctor  cursed  exclusively  in  the  Greek  and 
Latin  languages. 

In  five  minutes,  Queed  was  upon  his  work  again.  Not 
that  the  turpentine  was  yet  dying  slowly  away,  as  Fifi  had 
predicted  that  it  would.  On  the  contrary  it  burned  like  the 
fiery  furnace  of  Shadrach  and  Abednego.  But  One  Hour 
a  Day  to  be  given  to  Bodily  Exercise  !  ...  Oh,  every  second 
must  be  made  to  count  now,  whether  one's  head  was  break 
ing  into  flame  or  not. 

Whatever  his  faults  or  foibles,  Mr.  Queed  was  captain  of 
his  soul.  But  the  fates  were  against  him  to-night.  In  half 
an  hour,  when  the  sting  —  they  called  this  conflagration  a 
sting!  —  was  beginning  to  get  endurable  and  the  pencil 
to  move  steadily,  the  door  opened  and  in  strode  Professor 
Nicolovius;  he,  it  seemed,  wanted  matches.  Why  under 
heaven,  if  a  man  wanted  matches,  could  n't  he  buy  a  thou 
sand  boxes  and  store  them  in  piles  in  his  room? 

The  old  professor  apologized  blandly  for  his  intrusion,  but 
seemed  in  no  hurry  to  make  the  obvious  reparation.  He 
drew  a  match  along  the  bottom  of  the  mantle-shelf,  eyeing 
the  back  of  the  little  Doctor's  head  as  he  did  so,  and  slowly 
lit  a  cigar. 

"  I  'm  sorry  to  see  that  you've  met  with  an  accident,  Mr. 
Queed.  Is  there  anything,  perhaps,  that  I  might  do?" 

"Nothing  at  all,  thanks,"  said  Queed,  so  indignantly  that 
Nicolovius  dropped  the  subject  at  once. 


QUEED  :or 

The  star-boarder  of  Mrs.  Paynter's  might  have  been  fifty- 
five  or  he  might  have  been  seventy,  and  his  clothes  had  long 
been  the  secret  envy  of  Mr.  Bylash.  He  leaned  against  the 
mantel  at  his  ease,  blowing  blue  smoke. 

"You  find  this  a  fairly  pleasant  place  to  sit  of  an  evening, 
I  daresay!"  he  purred,  presently. 

The  back  of  the  young  man's  head  was  uncompromisingly 
stern.  "  I  might  as  well  try  to  write  in  the  middle  of  Centre 
Street." 

"So?"  said  Nicolovius,  not  catching  his  drift.  "I  should 
have  thought  that  — " 

"The  interruptions,"  said  Queed,  "are  constant." 

The  old  professor  laughed.  "Upon  my  word,  I  don't 
blame  you  for  saying  that.  The  gross  communism  of  a 
boarding-house  ...  it  does  gall  one  at  times!  So  far  as 
I  am  concerned,  I  relieve  you  of  it  at  once.  Good-night." 

The  afternoon  before  Nicolovius  had  happened  to  walk 
part  of  the  way  downtown  with  Mr.  Queed,  and  had  been 
favored  with  a  fair  amount  of  his  stately  conversation.  He 
shut  the  door  now  somewhat  puzzled  by  the  young  man's 
marked  curtness;  but  then  Nicolovius  knew  nothing  about 
the  turpentine. 

The  broken  evening  wore  on,  with  progress  slower  than 
the  laborer's  in  Problem  71,  when  he  decided  to  build  two 
rods  less  a  day.  At  eleven,  Miss  Miller,  who  had  been  to 
the  theatre,  breezed  in;  she  wanted  a  drink  of  water.  At 
1145  —  Queed 's  open  watch  kept  accurate  tally  —  there 
came  Trainer  Klinker,  who,  having  sought  his  pupil  vainly 
in  the  Scriptorium,  retraced  his  steps  to  rout  him  out  below. 
At  sight  of  the  tall  bottle  in  Klinker's  hand  Queed  shrank, 
fearing  that  Fifi  had  sent  him  with  a  second  dose  of  turpen 
tine.  But  the  bottle  turned  out  to  contain  merely  a  rare 
unguent  just  obtained  by  Klinker  from'his  friend  Smithy,  the 
physical  instructor  at  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  deemed  sur 
prisingly  effective  for  the  development  of  the  academic  bicep. 

At  last  there  was  blessed  quiet,  and  he  could  write  again. 
The  city  slept;  the  last  boarder  was  abed;  the  turpentine 


102  QUEED 

had  become  a  peace  out  of  pain ;  only  the  ticking  of  the  clock 
filtered  into  the  perfect  calm  of  the  dining-room.  The  little 
Doctor  of  Mrs.  Paynter's  stood  face  to  face  with  his  love, 
embraced  his  heart's  desire.  He  looked  into  the  heart  of 
Science  and  she  gave  freely  to  her  lord  and  master.  Sprawled 
there  over  the  Turkey-red  cloth,  which  was  not  unhaunted 
by  the  ghosts  of  dead  dinners,  he  became  chastely  and  di 
vinely  happy.  His  mind  floated  away  into  the  empyrean; 
he  saw  visions  of  a  far  more  perfect  Society;  dreamed 
dreams  of  the  ascending  spiral  whose  law  others  had  groped 
at,  but  he  would  be  the  first  to  formulate ;  caught  and  fondled 
the  secret  of  the  whole  great  Design;  reduced  it  to  a  rule- 
of-thumb  to  do  his  bidding ;  bestrode  the  whole  world  like  a 
great  Colossus.  .  .  . 

From  which  flight  he  descended  with  a  thud  to  observe 
that  it  was  quarter  of  two  o'clock,  and  the  dining-room  was 
cold  with  the  dying  down  of  the  Latrobe,  and  the  excellent 
reading-lamp  in  the  death-throes  of  going  out. 

He  went  upstairs  in  the  dark,  annoyed  with  himself  for 
having  overstayed  his  bedtime.  Long  experimentation  had 
shown  him  that  the  minimum  of  sleep  he  could  get  along 
with  to  advantage  was  six  and  one-half  hours  nightly.  This 
meant  bed  at  1.30  exactly,  and  he  hardly  varied  it  five 
minutes  in  a  year.  To  his  marrow  he  was  systematic;  he 
was  as  definite  as  an  adding-machine,  as  practical  as  a  cash 
register.  But  even  now,  on  this  exceptional  night,  he  did 
not  go  straight  to  bed.  Something  still  remained  to  be 
accomplished :  an  outrage  upon  his  sacred  Schedule. 

In  the  first  halcyon  days  at  Mrs.  Paynter's,  before  the 
board  question  ever  came  up  at  all,  the  iron-clad  Schedule 
of  Hours  under  which  he  was  composing  his  great  work  had 
stood  like  this: 

8.20  Breakfast 

840  Evolutionary  Sociology 

1.30  Dinner 

2  Evolutionary  Sociology 

7  Supper 

7.20  to  1 .30  Evolutionary  Sociology 


QUEED  103 

But  the  course  of  true  love  never  yet  ran  smooth,  and 
this  schedule  was  too  ideal  to  stand.  First  the  Post  had  come 
along  and  nicked  a  clean  hour  out  of  it,  and  now  his  Body 
had  unexpectedly  risen  and  claimed  yet  another  hour.  And, 
beyond  even  this  .  .  .  some  devilish  whim  had  betrayed 
him  to-night  into  offering  his  time  for  the  service  and  uses 
of  the  landlady's  daughter  in  the  puling  matter  of  algebra. 

No  .  .  .no  I  He  would  not  put  that  in.  The  girl  could 
not  be  so  selfish  as  to  take  advantage  of  his  over-generous 
impulse.  She  must  understand  that  his  time  belonged  to  the 
ages  and  the  race,  not  to  the  momentary  perplexities  of  a 
high  school  dunce.  ...  At  the  worst  it  would  be  only  five 
minutes  here  and  there  —  say  ten  minutes  a  week;  forty 
minutes  a  month.  No,  no!  He  would  not  put  that  in. 

But  the  hour  of  Bodily  Exercise  could  not  be  so  evaded. 
It  must  go  in.  On  land  or  sea  there  was  no  help  for  that. 
For  thirty  days  henceforward  at  the  least  —  and  a  voice 
within  him  whispered  that  it  would  be  for  much  longer  — 
his  Schedule  must  stand  like  this : 

8. 20  Breakfast 

840  Evolutionary  Sociology 

1 .30  Dinner 

2  Evolutionary  Sociology 

4.45  to  5.15  Open- Air  Pedestrianism 

5.15  to  6.15  The  Post 

6.15  to  6.45  Klinker's  Exercises  for  all  Parts  of  the 

Body 

7  Supper 

7.20  Evolutionary  Sociology 

Hand  clasped  in  his  hair,  Queed  stared  long  at  this  wreck 
age  with  a  sense  of  foreboding  and  utter  despondency. 
Doubtless  Mr.  Pat,  who  was  at  that  moment  peacefully 
pulling  a  pipe  over  his  last  galleys  at  the  Post  office,  would 
have  been  astonished  to  learn  what  havoc  his  accursed  fleas 
had  wrought  with  the  just  expectations  of  posterity. 


IX 

Of  Charles  Gardiner  West,  P resident-Elect  of  Blaines  College, 
and  his  Ladies  Fair:  all  in  Mr.  West's  Lighter  Manner. 

THE  closing  German  of  the  Thursday  Cotillon,  hard 
upon  the  threshold  of  a  late  Lent,  was  a  dream  of 
pure  delight.  Six  of  them  in  the  heart  of  every 
season  since  1871,  these  Germans  have  become  famous 
wherever  the  light  fantastic  toe  of  aristocracy  trips  and  eke 
is  tripped.  They  are  the  badge  of  quality,  and  the  test  of  it, 
the  sure  scaling-rod  by  which  the  frightened  debutante  may 
measure  herself  at  last,  to  ask  of  her  mirror  that  night,  with 
who  can  say  what  tremors:  "Am  la  success?"  Over  these 
balls  strangers  go  mad.  They  come  from  immense  distances 
to  attend  them,  sometimes  with  superciliousness;  are 
instantly  captivated ;  and  returning  to  their  homes,  wherever 
they  may  be,  sell  out  their  businesses  for  a  song  and  move  on, 
to  get  elected  if  they  can,  which  does  not  necessarily  follow. 
Carriages,  in  stately  procession,  disembarked  their  pre 
cious  freight ;  the  lift,  laden  with  youth  and  beauty,  shot  up 
and  down  like  a  glorious  Jack-in-the-Box;  over  the  corridors 
poured  a  stream  of  beautiful  maidens  and  handsome  gentle 
men,  to  separate  for  their  several  tiring-rooms,  and  soon 
to  remeet  in  the  palm-decked  vestibule.  Within  the  great 
room,  couples  were  already  dancing;  Fetzy's  Hungarians 
on  a  dais,  concealed  behind  a  wild  thicket  of  growing  things, 
were  sighing  out  a  wonderful  waltz;  rows  of  white-covered 
chairs  stood  expectantly  on  all  four  sides  of  the  room;  and 
the  chaperones,  august  and  handsome,  stood  in  a  stately 
line  to  receive  and  to  welcome.  And  to  them  came  in  salu 
tation  Charles  Gardiner  West  and,  beside  him,  the  lady 
whom  he  honored  with  his  hand  that  evening,  Miss  Milli- 
cent  Avery,  late  of  Maunch  Chunk,  but  now  of  Ours. 


QUEED  105 

They  made  their  devoirs  to  the  dowagers;  silently  they 
chose  their  seats,  which  he  bound  together  with  a  handker 
chief  in  a  true  lovers'  knot;  and,  Fetzy's  continuing  its 
heavenly  work,  he  put  his  arm  about  her  without  speech, 
and  they  floated  away  upon  the  rhythmic  tide. 

At  last  her  voice  broke  the  golden  silence:  "I  feel  enor 
mously  happy  to-night.  I  don't  know  why." 

The  observation  might  seem  unnoteworthy  to  the  casual, 
but  it  carried  them  all  around  the  room  again. 

"Fortune  is  good  to  me,"  said  he,  as  lightly  as  he  could, 
"to  let  me  be  with  you  when  you  feel  like  that." 

He  had  never  seen  her  so  handsome;  the  nearness  of  her 
beauty  intoxicated  him;  her  voice  was  indolent,  provoca 
tive.  She  was  superbly  dressed  in  white,  and  on  her  rounded 
breast  nodded  his  favor,  a  splendid  corsage  of  orchid  and 
lily-of-the-valley. 

"Fortune?"  she  queried.  "Don't  you  think  that  men 
bring  these  things  to  pass  for  themselves?" 

They  had  made  the  circle  on  that,  too,  before  West  said : 
"I  wonder  if  you  begin  to  understand  what  a  power  you 
have  of  bringing  happiness  to  me." 

He  looked,  and  indeed,  for  the  transient  moment,  he  felt, 
like  a  man  who  must  have  his  answer,  for  better  or  worse, 
within  the  hour.  She  saw  his  look,  and  her  eyes  fell  before 
it,  not  wholly  because  she  knew  how  to  do  that  to  exactly 
the  best  advantage.  Few  persons  would  have  mistaken 
Miss  Avery  for  a  wholly  inexperienced  and  unsophisticated 
girl.  But  how  was  she  to  know  that  that  same  look  had  risen 
in  the  eyes  of  West,  and  that  same  note,  obviously  sincere, 
broken  suddenly  into  his  pleasant  voice,  for  many,  many 
of  the  fair? 

The  music  died  in  a  splendid  crash,  and  they  threaded 
their  way  to  their  seats,  slowly  and  often  stopped,  across 
the  crowded  floor.  Many  eyes  followed  them  as  they  walked. 
She  was  still  "new"  to  us;  she  was  beautiful;  she  was  her 
own  young  lady,  and  something  about  her  suggested  that 
she  would  be  slightly  unsafe  for  boys,  the  headstrong, 


106  QUEED 

and  the  foolish;  rumor  made  her  colossally  wealthy.  As 
for  him,  he  was  the  glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  form, 
and  much  more  than  that  besides.  Of  an  old  name  but  a 
scanty  fortune,  he  had  won  his  place  by  his  individual 
merits ;  chiefly ,  perhaps,  for  so  wags  the  world,  by  an  exterior 
singularly  prepossessing  and  a  manner  that  was  a  possession 
above  rubies.  His  were  good  looks  of  the  best  fashion  of 
men's  good  looks;  not  ajtall  man,  he  yet  gave  the  effect 
of  tallness,  so  perfect  was  his  carriage,  so  handsome  his  ad 
dress.  And  he  was  as  clever  as  charming;  cultured  as 
the  world  knows  culture;  literary  as  the  term  goes;  nor  was 
there  any  one  who  made  a  happier  speech  than  he,  whether  in 
the  forum  or  around  the  festal  board.  Detractors,  of  course, 
he  had  —  as  which  of  those  who  raise  their  heads  above  the 
dead  level  have  not?  —  but  they  usually  contented  them 
selves  with  saying,  as  Buck  Klinker  had  once  said,  that  his 
manners  were  a  little  too  good  to  be  true.  To  most  he  seemed 
a  fine  type  of  the  young  American  of  the  modern  South;  a 
brave  gentleman;  a  true  Democrat  with  all  his  honors;  and, 
though  he  had  not  yet  been  tested  in  any  position  of  respon 
sibility,  a  rising  man  who  held  the  future  in  his  hand. 

They  took  their  seats,  and  at  last  he  freed  himself  from 
the  unsteadying  embarrassment  which  had  shaken  him  at 
the  first  sight  of  her  under  the  brilliant  lights  of  the  ball 
room. 

"Two  things  have  happened  to  make  this  seventh  of 
March  a  memorable  day  for  me,"  said  he.  "Two  great 
honors  have  come  to  me.  They  are  both  for  your  ear  alone." 

She  flung  upon  him  the  masked  battery  of  her  eyes. 
They  were  extraordinary  eyes,  gray  and  emerald,  not  large, 
but  singularly  long.  He  looked  fully  into  them,  and  she 
slowly  smiled. 

uThe  other  honor,"  said  Charles  Gardiner  West,  "is  of  a 
commoner  kind.  They  want  to  make  me  president  of 
Blaines  College." 

"Oh  —  really ! ' '  said  Miss  Avery ,  and  paused .  ' ' And  shall 
you  let  them  do  it?" 


QUEED  107 

He  nodded,  suddenly  thoughtful  and  serious.  "Long 
before  snow  flies,  Semple  &  West  will  be  Semple  and  Some 
thing  else.  They'll  elect  me  in  June.  I  need  n't  say  that 
no  one  must  know  of  this  now  —  but  you." 

"Of  course.  It  is  a  great  honor,"  she  said,  with  faint 
enthusiasm.  "But  why  are  you  giving  up  your  business? 
Does  n't  it  interest  you?" 

He  made  a  large  gesture.  "Oh,  it  interests  me.  .  .  .  But 
what  does  it  all  come  to,  at  the  last?  A  man  aspires  to  find 
some  better  use  for  his  abilities  than  dollar-baiting,  don't 
you  think?" 

Miss  Avery  privately  thought  not,  though  she  certainly 
did  not  like  his  choice  of  terms. 

"  If  a  man  became  the  greatest  stock-jobber  in  the  world, 
who  would  remember  him  after  he  was  gone?  Miss  Avery, 
I  earnestly  want  to  serve.  My  deepest  ambition  is  to  leave 
some  mark  for  the  better  upon  my  environment,  my  city, 
and  my  State.  I  am  baring  my  small  dream  for  you  to  look 
at,  you  see.  Now  this  little  college  ..." 

But  a  daring  youth  by  the  name  of  Beverley  Byrd  bore 
Miss  Avery  away  for  the  figure  which  was  just  then  form 
ing,  and  the  little  college  hung  in  the  air  for  the  nonce.  Mr. 
West  was  so  fortunate  as  to  secure  the  hand  of  Miss  Wey- 
land  for  the  figure,  he  having  taken  the  precaution  to  ask 
that  privilege  when  he  greeted  her  some  minutes  since. 
Couple  behind  couple  they  formed,  the  length  of  the  great 
room,  and  swung  away  on  a  brilliant  march. 

"It's  going  to  be  a  delicious  German  —  can't  you  tell  by 
the  feel  ?"  began  Sharlee,  doing  the  march  with  a  deux-temps 
step.  "  I  'm  so  glad  to  see  you,  for  it  seems  ages  since  we  met, 
though,  you  know,  it  was  only  last  week.  Is  not  that  a  nice 
speech  for  greeting?  Only  I  must  tell  you  that  I  've  said  it 
to  four  other  men  already,  and  the  evening  is  yet  young." 

"  Is  there  nothing  in  all  the  world  that  you  can  say,  quite 
new  and  special,  for  me?" 

"Oh,  yes!  For  one  thing  your  partner  to-night  is  alto 
gether  the  loveliest  thing  I  ever  saw.  And  for  another — " 


108  QUEED 

"I  am  listening." 

"  For  another,  her  partner  to-night  is  quite  the  nicest  man 
in  all  this  big,  big  room." 

"And  how  many  men  have  you  said  that  to  to-night,  here 
in  the  youth  of  the  evening?" 

But  the  figure  had  reached  that  point  where  the  paths  of 
partners  must  diverge  for  a  space,  and  at  this  juncture 
Sharlee  whirled  away  from  him.  Around  and  up  the  room 
swept  the  long  file  of  low-cut  gowns  and  pretty  faces,  and 
step  for  step  across  the  floor  moved  a  similar  line  of  swallow 
tail  and  masculinity.  At  the  head  of  the  room  the  two  lines 
curved  together  again,  round  meeting  round,  and  here,  in 
good  time,  the  lovely  billow  bore  on  Sharlee,  who  slipped 
her  little  left  hand  into  West's  expectant  right  with  the 
sweetest  air  in  the  world. 

"Nobody  but  you,  Charles  Gardiner  West,"  said  she. 

The  whistle  blew ;  the  music  changed ;  and  off  they  went 
upon  the  dreamy  valse. 

There  are  dancers  in  this  world,  and  other  dancers;  but 
Sharlee  was  the  sort  that  old  ladies  stop  and  watch.  Of  her 
infinite  poetry  of  motion  it  is  only  necessary  to  say  that  she 
could  make  even  "the  Boston"  look  graceful;  as  witness 
her  now.  In  that  large  room,  detectives  could  have  found 
men  who  thought  Sharlee  decidedly  prettier  than  Miss 
Avery.  Her  look  was  not  languorous;  her  voice  was  not 
provocative;  her  eyes  were  not  narrow  and  tip-tilted;  they 
did  not  look  dangerous  in  the  least,  unless  you  so  regard  all 
extreme  pleasure  derived  from  looking  at  anything  in  the 
nature  of  eyes.  Nor  was  there  anything  in  the  least  busi 
nesslike,  official,  or  stenographic  about  her  manner.  If  her 
head  bulged  with  facts  about  the  treatment  of  the  deficient 
classes,  no  hint  of  that  appeared  in  her  talk  at  parties.  Few 
of  the  young  men  she  danced  with  thought  her  clever,  and 
this  shows  how  clever  she  really  was.  For  there  are  men  in 
this  world  who  will  run  ten  city  blocks  in  any  weather  to 
avoid  talking  to  a  woman  who  knows  more  than  they  do, 
and  knows  it,  and  shows  that  she  knows  that  she  knows  it* 


QUEED  109 

Charles  Gardiner  West  looked  down  at  Sharlee;  and  the 
music  singing  in  his  blood,  and  the  measure  that  they  trod 
together,  was  all  a  part  of  something  splendid  that  belonged 
to  them  alone  in  the  world.  Another  man  at  such  a  moment 
would  have  contented  himself  with  a  pretty  speech,  but 
West  gave  his  sacred  confidence.  He  told  Sharlee  about  the 
presidency  of  Blaines  College. 

Sharlee  did  not  have  to  ask  what  he  would  do  with  such 
an  offer.  She  recognized  at  sight  the  opportunity  for  ser 
vice  he  had  long  sought;  and  she  so  sincerely  rejoiced  and 
triumphed  in  it  for  him  that  his  heart  grew  very  tender 
toward  her,  and  he  told  her  all  his  plans;  how  he  meant 
to  make  of  Blaines  College  a  great  enlightened  modern 
institution  which  should  turn  out  a  growing  army  of  brave 
young  men  for  the  upbuilding  of  the  city  and  the  state. 

"They  elect  me  the  first  of  June.  Of  course  I  am  supposed 
to  know  nothing  about  it  yet,  and  you  must  keep  it  as  a 
great  secret  if  you  please.  I  give  up  my  business  in  April. 
The  next  month  goes  to  my  plans,  arranging  and  laying 
out  a  great  advertising  campaign  for  the  September  open 
ing.  Early  in  June  I  shall  sail  for  Europe,  nominally  for  a 
little  rest,  but  really  to  study  the  school  systems  of  the  old 
world.  The  middle  of  August  will  find  me  at  my  new  desk, 
oh,  so  full  of  enthusiasms  and  high  hopes!" 

"It's  splendid.  .  .  .  Oh,  how  fine!"  paeaned  she. 

Upon  the  damask  wrapping  of  Sharlee's  chair  lay  a  great 
armful  of  red,  red  roses,  the  gift  of  prodigal  young  Beverley 
Byrd,  and  far  too  large  to  carry.  She  lifted  them  up;  scented 
their  fragrance ;  selected  and  broke  a  perfect  flower  from  its 
long  stem;  and  held  it  out  with  a  look. 

"The  Assistant  Secretary  of  the  State  Department  of 
Charities  presents  her  humble  duty  to  President  West." 

"Ah!  Then  the  president  commands  his  minion  to  place 
it  tenderly  in  his  buttonhole." 

"Look  at  the  sea  of  faces  .  .  .  lorgnettes,  too.  The 
minion  dassen't." 

"Oh,  that  we  two  were  Maying! " 


I  io  QUEED 

"You  misread  our  announcement,"  said  Beverley  Byrd, 
romping  up.  "No  opening  for  young  men  here,  Gardy! 
Butt  out." 

West  left  her,  his  well-shaped  head  in  something  of  a 
whirl.  In  another  minute  he  was  off  with  Miss  Avery  upon 
a  gallant  two-step. 

Fetzy's  played  on ;  the  dancers  floated  or  hopped  accord 
ing  to  their  nature ;  and  presently  a  waltz  faded  out  and  in  a 
breath  converted  itself  into  the  march  for  supper,  the  same 
air  always  for  I  don't  know  how  many  years. 

Miss  Avery  rose  slowly  from  her  seat,  a  handsome  siren 
shaped,  drilled,  fitted,  polished  from  her  birth  for  nothing  else 
than  the  beguiling  of  lordly  man.  From  the  heart  of  her 
beautiful  bouquet  she  plucked  a  spray  of  perfect  lily-of-the- 
valley,  and,  eyes  upon  her  own  flowers,  held  it  out  to 
West. 

"They  are  beautiful,"  she  said  in  her  languorous  voice. 
" I  had  n't  thanked  you  for  them,  had  I?  Wear  this  for  me, 
will  you  not?"  She  looked  up  and  her  long  eyes  fell  —  we 
need  not  assume  for  the  first  time  —  upon  the  flower  in  his 
lapel.  "I  beg  your  pardon,"  she  said,  with  the  slightest 
change  of  expression  and  voice.  "  I  see  that  you  are  already 
provided.  Shall  we  not  go  up?" 

Laughing,  he  plucked  a  red,  red  rose  from  his  button-hole 
and  jammed  it  carelessly  in  his  pocket. 

"Give  it  to  me." 

"Why,  it's  of  no  consequence.   Flowers  quickly  fade." 

"Won't  you  understand?  .  .  .  you  maddening  lady. 
I've  known  all  these  girls  since  they  were  born.  When 
they  offer  me  flowers,  shall  I  hurt  their  feelings  and  refuse? 
Give  it  to  me." 

She  shook  her  head  slowly. 

"Don't  you  know  that  I'll  prize  it  —  and  why?"  said 
he  in  a  low  voice.  "Give  it  to  me." 

Their  eyes  met;  hers  fluttered  down;  but  she  raised  them 
suddenly  and  put  the  flower  in  his  buttonhole,  her  face  so 
close  that  he  felt  her  breath  on  his  cheek. 


QUEED  in 

Beside  him  at  supper,  she  took  up  the  thread  of  their 
earlier  talk. 

"If  you  must  give  up  your  business,  why  should  n't  it 
be  for  something  bigger  than  the  college  —  public  life  for 
instance?" 

"I  may  say,"  West  answered  her,  "that  as  yet  there 
has  not  been  that  sturdy  demand  from  the  public,  that  up 
roarious  insistence  from  the  honest  voter  ..." 

"At  dinner  the  other  evening  I  met  one  of  your  fine  old 
patriarchs,  Colonel  Cowles.  He  told  us  that  the  new  Mayor 
of  this  city,  if  he  was  at  all  the  right  sort,  would  go  from 
the  City  Hall  to  the  Governorship.  And  do  you  know  who 
represents  his  idea  of  the  right  sort  of  Mayor?" 

West,  picking  at  a  bit  of  duck,  said  that  he  had  n't  the 
least  idea. 

' '  So  modest  —  so  modest !  He  said  that  the  city  needed 
a  young  progressive  man  of  the  better  class  and  the  highest 
character,  and  that  man  was  —  you.  No  other,  by  your 
leave!  The  Mayoralty,  the  Governorship,  the  Senate  wait 
ing  behind  that,  perhaps  —  who  knows?  Is  it  wise  to  bottle 
one's  self  up  in  the  blind  alley  of  the  college?" 

Thus  Delilah:  to  which  Samson  replied  that  a  modern 
college  is  by  no  means  a  blind  alley;  that  from  the  presi 
dential  retreat  he  would  keep  a  close  eye  upon  the  march 
of  affairs,  doubtless  doing  his  share  toward  moulding  public 
opinion  through  contributions  to  the  Post  and  the  reviews; 
that,  in  fact,  public  life  had  long  had  an  appeal  for  him,  and 
that  if  at  any  time  a  cry  arose  in  the  land  for  him  to  come 
forward  .  .  . 

"  For  a  public  career,"  said  Delilah,  with  a  sigh,  "  I  should 
think  you  had  far  rather  be  editor  of  the  Post,  for  example, 
than  head  of  this  college." 

Samson  made  an  engaging  reply  that  had  to  do  with 
Colonel  Cowles.  The  talk  ran  off  into  other  channels,  but 
somehow  Delilah's  remark  stuck  in  the  young  man's  head. 

Soul  is  not  all  that  flows  at  the  Thursday  German,  and 
it  has  frequently  been  noticed  that  the  dance  becomes 


QUEED 

gayest  after  supper.  But  it  becomes,  too,  sadly  brief,  and 
Home  Sweet  Home  falls  all  too  soon  upon  the  enthralled  ear. 
Now  began  the  movement  toward  that  place,  be  it  never  so 
humble,  like  which  there  is  none;  and  amid  the  throng 
gathered  in  the  vestibule  before  the  cloak-rooms,  West 
again  found  himself  face  to  face  with  Miss  Weyland  with 
whom  he  had  stepped  many  a  measure  that  evening. 

"I've  been  thinking  about  it  lots,  President  West,"  said 
she;  "it  grows  better  all  the  time.  Won't  you  please  teach 
all  your  boys  to  be  very  good,  and  to  work  hard,  and  never 
to  grow  up  to  make  trouble  for  the  State  Department  of 
Charities." 

She  had  on  a  carriage-robe  of  light  blue,  collared  and 
edged  with  white  fur,  and  her  arms  were  as  full  of  red  roses 
as  arms  could  be. 

"But  if  I  do  that  too  well,"  said  he,  "what  would  become 
of  you?  Blaines  College  shall  never  blot  out  the  Depart 
ment  of  Charities.  I  nearly  forgot  a  bit  of  news.  Gloomy 
news.  The  Post  is  going  to  fire  your  little  Doctor." 

"Ah  —  no!" 

"It  looks  that  way.  The  directors  will  take  it  up  defin 
itely  in  April.  Colonel  Cowles  is  going  to  recommend  it. 
He  says  the  Doc  has  more  learning  than  society  requires." 

"But  don't  you  think  his  articles  give  a  —  a  tone  to  the 
paper  —  and  — ?  " 

"I  do;  a  sombre,  awful,  majestic  tone,  if  you  like,  but 
still  one  that  ought  to  be  worth  something." 

Sharlee  looked  sad,  and  it  was  one  of  her  best  looks. 

"Ah,  me!  I  don't  know  what  will  become  of  him  if  he  is 
turned  adrift.  Could  you,  could  you  do  anything?" 

"  I  can,  and  will,"  said  he  agreeably.  "  I  think  the  man 's 
valuable,  and  you  may  count  on  it  that  I  shall  use  my 
influence  to  have  him  kept." 

So  the  Star  and  the  Planet  again  fought  in  their  courses 
for  Mr.  Queed.  West,  gazing  down  at  her,  overcoat  on  arm, 
looked  like  a  Planet  who  usually  had  his  way.  The  Star,  too, 
had  strong  inclinations  in  the  same  direction.  For  example, 


QUEED  113 

she  had  noted  at  supper  the  lily-of-the-valley  in  the  Plan 
et's  buttonhole,  and  she  had  not  been  able  to  see  any  good 
reason  for  that. 

Her  eyes  became  dreamy.  "How  shall  I  say  thank  you? 
...  I  know.  I  must  give  you  one  of  my  pretty  flowers 
for  your  buttonhole."  She  began  pulling  out  one  of  the 
glorious  roses,  but  suddenly  checked  herself  and  gazed  off 
pensively  into  space,  a  finger  at  her  lip.  "  Ah !  I  thought  this 
gesture  seemed  strangely  familiar,  and  now  I  remember. 
I  gave  him  a  flower  once  before,  and  ah,  look!  .  .  .  the 
president  of  the  college  has  tossed  it  away." 

West  glanced  hastily  down  at  his  .buttonhole.  The 
lily-of-the-valley  was  gone;  ne  had  no  idea  where  he  had 
lost  it,  nor  could  he  now  stay  to  inquire.  The  rose  he  took 
with  tender  carefulness  from  the  upper  pocket  of  his  waist 
coat. 

"What  did  Mademoiselle  expect?"  said  he,  with  a  courtly 
bow.  "The  president  wears  it  over  his  heart." 

Sharlee's  smile  was  a  coronation  for  a  man. 

"That  one  was  for  the  president.  This  new  one,"  said  she, 
plucking  it  out,  "is  for  the  director  and  —  the  man." 

This  new  one,  after  all,  she  put  into  his  buttonhole  with 
her  own  hands,  while  he  held  her  great  bunch  of  them. 
As  she  turned  away  from  the  dainty  ceremony,  her  color 
faintly  heightened,  Sharlee  looked  straight  into  the  narrow 
eyes  of  Miss  Avery,  who,  talking  with  a  little  knot  of  men 
some  distance  away,  had  been  watching  her  closely.  The 
two  girls  smiled  and  bowed  to  each  other  with  extraordinary 
sweetness. 


X 

Of  Fifi  on  Friendship,  and  who  would  be  sorry  if  Queed  died ; 
of  Queed's  Mad  Impulse,  sternly  overcome  ;  of  his  Indig 
nant  Call  upon  Nicolovius,  the  Old  Professor. 

COULD     I    interrupt    you    for    just   a    minute,  Mr. 
Queed?" 
"  No.    It  is  not  time  yet." 

" Cicero's  so  horrid  to-night." 

"Don't  scatter  your  difficulties,  as  I've  told  you  before. 
Gather  them  all  together  and  have  them  ready  to  present 
to  me  at  the  proper  time.  I  shall  make  the  usual  pause," 
said  Mr.  Queed,  "at  nine  sharp." 

Fifi,  after  all,  had  been  selfish  enough  to  take  the  little 
Doctor  at  his  word.  He  had  both  given  her  the  freedom  of 
his  dining-room  and  ordered  her  to  bring  her  difficulties  to 
him,  instead  of  sitting  there  and  noisily  crying  over  them. 
And  she  had  done  his  bidding,  night  after  night.  For  his 
part  he  had  stuck  manfully  by  his  moment  of  reckless  gen 
erosity,  no  matter  how  much  he  may  have  regretted  it 
He  helped  Fifi,  upon  her  request,  without  spoken  protest  oF 
censure.  But  he  insisted  on  doing  it  after  an  ironclad  sched 
ule:  Absolute  silence  until  nine  o'clock;  then  an  interlude 
for  the  solving  of  difficulties;  absolute  silence  after  that; 
then  at  9.45  a  second  interlude  for  the  solving  of  the  last 
difficulties  of  the  night.  The  old  rule  of  the  dining-room, 
the  Silence  sign,  had  been  necessarily  suspended,  but  the 
young  man  enforced  his  schedule  of  hours  far  more  strictly 
than  the  average  railroad. 

"Nine  o'clock,"  he  announced  presently.  " Bring  me  your 
difficulties." 

Fifi's  brain  was  at  low  ebb  to-night.    She  came  around 


QUEED  115 

with  several  books,  and  he  jabbed  his  pencil  at  her  open 
Cicero  with  some  contempt. 

"You  have  a  fundamental  lack  of  acquaintance  with 
Latin  grammar,  Miss  —  Miss  Fifi.  You  badly  need  — " 

"Why  don't  you  call  me  Fifi,  Mr.  Queed?  That's  what 
all  my  friends  call  me." 

He  stared  at  her  startled;  she  thought  his  eyes  looked 
almost  terrified.  "My  dear  young  lady!  I'm  not  your 
friend." 

A  rare  color  sprang  into  Fifi's  pallid  cheeks:  "I  —  I 
thought  you  liked  me  —  from  your  being  so  good  about 
helping  me  with  my  lessons  —  and  everything." 

Queed  cleared  his  throat.  "I  do  like  you  —  in  a  way. 
Yes  —  in  that  way  —  I  like  you  very  well.  I  will  call  you 
F  —  Fifi,  if  you  wish.  But  —  friends!  Oh,  no!  They  take 
up  more  time  than  such  a  man  as  I  can  afford." 

"  I  don't  think  I  would  take  up  one  bit  more  time  as  your 
friend  than  I  do  now,"  said  Fifi,  in  a  plaintive  voice. 

Queed,  uncomfortably  aware  of  the  flying  minutes,  felt 
like  saying  that  that  was  impossible. 

"Oh,  I  know  what  I'm  talking  about,  I  assure  you,"  said 
the  possessor  of  two  friends  in  New  York.  "  I  have  threshed 
the  whole  question  out  in  a  practical  way." 

"Suppose,"  said  Fifi,  "your  book  came  out  and  you  were 
very  famous,  but  all  alone  in  the  world,  without  a  friend. 
And  you  died  and  there  was  not  one  single  person  to  cry  and 
miss  you  —  would  you  think  that  was  a  —  a  successful  life?" 

"Oh,  I  suppose  so!  Yes,  yes!" 

"  But  don't  —  don't  you  want  to  have  people  like  you  and 
be  your  friend?" 

"  My  dear  young  lady,  it  is  not  a  question  of  what  I  want. 
I  was  not  put  here  in  the  world  to  frivol  through  a  life  of 
gross  pleasure.  I  have  serious  work  to  do  in  the  service  of 
humankind,  and  I  can  do  it  only  by  rigid  concentration  and 
ruthless  elimination  of  the  unessential.  Surely  you  can 
grasp  that?" 

"But — if  you  died  to-morrow, "said  Fifi,  fearfully  fasci- 


QUEED 

nated  by  this  aspect  of  the  young  man's  majestic  isolation, 
—  "don't  you  know  of  anybody  who'd  be  really  and  truly 
sorry?" 

"Really,  I've  never  thought  of  it,  but  doubtless  my  two 
friends  in  New  York  would  be  sorry  after  their  fashion. 
They,  I  believe,  are  all." 

"No  they  are  n't!  There's  somebody  else!" 

Queed  supposed  she  was  going  to  say  God,  but  he  duti 
fully  inquired,  "Who?" 

Fifi  looked  decidedly  disappointed.  "I  thought  you 
knew,"  she  said,  gazing  at  him  with  childlike  directness. 
"Me." 

Queed 's  eyes  fell.  There  was  a  brief  silence.  The  young 
man  became  aware  of  a  curious  sensation  in  his  chest  which 
he  did  not  understand  in  the  least,  but  which  he  was  not 
prepared  to  describe  as  objectionable.  To  pass  over  it,  and 
to  bring  the  conversation  to  an  immediate  close,  he  rapped 
the  open  book  austerely  with  his  pencil. 

"We  must  proceed  with  the  difficulties.  Let  me  hear  you 
try  the  passage.  Come!  Quam  ob  rem,  Quirites.  .  .  ." 

The  nine  o'clock  difficulties  proceeded  with,  and  duly 
cleared  up,  Fifi  did  not  stay  for  the  second,  or  9.45,  inter 
lude.  She  closed  M.  T.  Ciceronis  Orationes  Selectae, 
gathered  together  her  other  paraphernalia,  and  then  she 
said  suddenly :  — 

"I  may  leave  school  next  week,  Mr.  Queed.  I — don't 
think  I'm  going  to  graduate." 

He  looked  up,  surprised  and  displeased.  "Why  on  earth 
do  you  think  that?" 

"Well,  you  see,  they  don't  think  I'm  strong  enough  to 
keep  up  the  work  right  now.  The  Doctor  was  here  to-day, 
and  that 's  what  he  says.  It 's  silly,  I  think  —  I  know  I  am." 

Queed  was  playing  the  devil's  tattoo  with  his  pencil, 
scowling  somewhat  nervously.  "  Did  you  want  to  graduate 
particularly?" 

A  look  of  exquisite  wistfulness  swept  the  child's  face,  and 
was  gone.  "Yes,  I  wanted  to  —  lots.  But  I  won't  mind  so 


QUEED  117 

much  after  I  Tve  had  time  to  get  used  to  it.  You  know  the 
way  people  are." 

There  was  a  silence,  during  which  the  young  man  wrestled 
with  the  sudden  mad  idea  of  offering  to  help  Fifi  with  all 
her  lessons  each  night  —  not  merely  with  the  difficulties  — 
thus  enabling  her  to  keep  up  with  her  class  with  a  mini 
mum  of  work.  Where  such  an  impulse  came  from  he  could 
not  conjecture.  He  put  it  down  with  a  stern  hand.  Per 
sonally,  he  felt,  he  might  be  almost  willing  to  make  this 
splendid  display  of  altruism;  but  for  the  sake  of  posterity 
and  the  common  good,  he  could  not  dream  of  stealing  so 
much  time  from  the  Magnum  Opus. 

"Well!"  he  said  rather  testily.  "That  is  too  bad." 

"  I  know  you  '11  be  glad  not  to  have  me  bothering  you  any 
more  with  my  lessons,  and  all." 

"I  will  not  say  that." 

He  looked  at  Fifi  closely,  examined  her  face  in  a  search 
ing,  personal  manner,  which  he  had  probably  never  before 
employed  in  reviewing  a  human  countenance. 

"You  don't  look  well  —  no,  not  in  the  least.  You  are  not 
well.  You  are  a  sick  girl,  and  you  ought  to  be  in  bed  at  this 
moment." 

Fifi  colored  with  pleasure.  "No,"  she  said,  "I  am  not 
well." 

Indeed  Fifi  was  not  well.  Her  cheek  spoke  of  the  three 
pounds  she  had  lost  since  he  had  first  helped  her  with  her 
difficulties,  and  the  eleven  pounds  before  that.  The  hand 
upon  the  Turkey-red  cloth  was  of  such  transparent  thinness 
that  you  were  sure  you  could  see  the  lamplight  shining 
through.  Her  eyes  were  startling,  they  were  so  full  of  other 
worldly  sweetness  and  so  ringed  beneath  with  shadows. 

"And  if  I  stopped  coming  down  here  to  work  nights," 
queried  Fifi  shamelessly,  "would  you  —  miss  me?" 

"Miss  you?" 

"You  wouldn't  —  you  wouldn't!  You'd  only  be  glad 
not  to  have  me  around  — " 

"I  can  truthfully  say,"  said  the  little  Doctor,  glancing  at 


iiS  QUEED 

his  watch,  "that  I  am  sorry  you  are  prevented  from  gradu 
ating." 

Fifi  retired  in  a  fit  of  coughing.  She  and  her  cough  had 
played  fast  and  loose  with  Queed's  great  work  that  evening, 
and,  moreover,  it  took  him  a  minute  and  a  half  to  get  her  out 
of  his  mind  after  she  had  gone.  Not  long  afterwards,  he 
discovered  that  the  yellow  sheet  he  wrote  upon  was  the  last 
of  his  pad.  That  meant  that  he  must  count  out  time  to  go 
upstairs  and  get  another  one. 

Count  out  time !  Why,  that  was  what  his  whole  life  had 
come  down  to  now !  What  was  it  but  a  steady  counting  out 
of  ever  more  and  more  time? 

The  thirty  days  of  hours  ceded  to  Klinker  were  up,  and 
instead  of  at  once  bringing  the  prodigal  experiment  to  a 
close,  Doctor  Queed  found  himself  terribly  tempted  to  listen 
to  his  trainer's  entreaties  and  extend  by  fifty  per  centum  the 
time  allotted  to  the  gymnasium  and  open-air  pedestrianism. 
He  could  not  avoid  the  knowledge  that  he  felt  decidedly 
better  since  he  had  begun  the  exercises,  especially  during 
these  last  few  days.  For  a  week  "  the  "  headache  and  he  had 
been  strangers.  Much  more  important,  he  was  con 
scious  of  bringing  to  his  work,  not  indeed  a  livelier  interest, 
for  that  would  have  been  impossible,  but  an  increasing 
vitality  and  an  enlarged  capacity.  He  kept  the  most  careful 
sort  of  tabs  upon  himself,  and  his  records  seemed  to  show,  at 
least  for  the  past  week  or  two,  that  his  net  volume  of  work 
had  not  been  seriously  lowered  by  the  hour  per  day  wrung 
from  the  Schedule.  The  exercises,  then,  seemed  to  be  paying 
their  own  freight.  And  besides  all  this,  they  were  clearly 
little  mile-stones  on  the  path  which  led  men  to  physical 
competency  and  the  ability  to  protect  their  articles  from 
public  affront. 

Still,  an  hour  out  was  an  hour  out  —  three  hundred 
and  sixty-five  hours  a  year  —  three  months'  delay  in 
finishing  his  book.  Making  allowance  for  increased  pro 
ductivity,  a  month  and  a  half's  delay.  And  that  was 
only  a  beginning.  The  Post  —  Klinker's  Exercises  for  All 


QUEED  119 

Parts  of  the  Body  —  Klinker  himself,  who  called  frequently 
—  now  Fifi  (eighteen  minutes  this  very  evening)  —  who 
could  say  where  the  mad  dissipation  would  end?  On  some  un 
charted  isle  in  the  far  South  Seas,  perchance,  a  man  might 
be  let  alone  to  do  his  work.  But  in  this  boarding-house,  it- 
was  clear  now,  the  effort  was  foredoomed  and  hopeless. 
Once  make  the  smallest  concession  to  the  infernal  ubiquity 
of  the  race,  once  let  the  topmost  bar  of  your  gate  down 
never  so  little,  and  the  whole  accursed  public  descended 
with  a  whoop  to  romp  all  over  the  premises.  What,  oh, 
what  was  the  use  of  trying?  .  .  . 

" Ah,  Mr.  Queed  —  well  met!  Won't  you  stop  in  and  see 
me  a  little  while?  You 're  enormously  busy,  I  know — but 
possibly  I  can  find  something  to  interest  you  in  my  poor 
little  collection  of  books." 

Nicolovius,  coming  up  the  stairs,  had  met  Queed  coming 
down,  pad  in  hand.  The  impertinence  of  the  old  professor's 
invitation  fitted  superbly  with  the  bitterness  of  the  little 
Doctor's  humor.  It  pressed  the  martyr's  crown  upon  his 
brow  till  the  perfectness  of  his  grudge  against  a  hateful 
world  lacked  nor  jot  nor  tittle. 

"Oh,  certainly!  Certainly!"  he  replied,  with  the  utmost 
indignation. 

Nicolovius,  bowing  courteously,  pushed  open  the  door. 

It  was  known  in  the  boarding-house  that  the  remodeling 
of  the  Second  Hall  Back  into  a  private  bathroom  for  Nico 
lovius  had  been  done  at  his  own  expense,  and  rumor  had  it 
that  for  his  two  rooms  —  his  " suite,"  as  Mrs.  Paynter 
called  it  —  he  paid  down  the  sum  of  eighteen  dollars 
weekly.  The  bed-sitting-room  into  which  he  now  ushered 
his  guest  was  the  prettiest  room  ever  seen  by  Mr.  Queed, 
who  had  seen  few  pretty  rooms  in  his  life.  Certainly  it  was 
a  charming  room  of  a  usual  enough  type :  lamplit  and  soft- 
carpeted  ;  brass  fittings  about  the  fireplace  where  a  coal  fire 
glowed ;  a  large  red  reading- table  with  the  customary  litter 
of  books  and  periodicals;  comfortable  chairs  to  sit  in;  two 
uncommonly  pretty  mahogany  bookcases  with  quaint 


120  QUEED 

leaded  windows.  The  crude  central  identity  about  all  bed 
rooms  that  had  hitherto  come  within  Queed's  ken,  to  wit, 
the  bed,  seemed  in  this  remarkable  room  to  be  wanting 
altogether.  For  how  was  he,  with  his  practical  inexperience, 
to  know  that  the  handsome  leather  lounge  in  the  bay- 
window  had  its  in'ards  crammed  full  of  sheets,  and  blankets, 
and  hinges  and  collapsible  legs? 

The  young  man  gravitated  instinctively  toward  the  book 
cases.  His  expert  eye  swept  over  the  titles,  and  his  gloom 
lightened  a  little. 

"You  have  some  fair  light  reading  here,  I  see,"  he  said, 
plucking  out  a  richly  bound  volume  of  Lecky's  History  of 
European  Morals. 

Nicolovius,  who  was  observing  him  closely,  smiled  to 
himself.  "Ah,  yes.  I  'm  the  merest  dilettante,  without  your 
happiness  of  being  a  specialist  of  authority." 

The  old  professor  was  a  tall  man,  though  somewhat 
stooped  and  shrunken,  and  his  head  was  as  bare  of  hair  as  the 
palm  of  your  hand;  which  of  course  was  why  he  wore  the 
black  silk  skull  cap  about  the  house.  On  the  contrary  his 
mustaches  were  singularly  long  and  luxuriant,  they,  and  the 
short,  smart  goatee,  being  of  a  peculiar  deep  auburn  shade. 
His  eyes  were  dark,  brilliant,  and  slightly  sardonic;  there 
were  yellow  pouches  under  them  and  deep  transverse  fur 
rows  on  his  forehead;  his  nose,  once  powerfully  aquiline, 
appeared  to  have  been  broken  cleanly  across  the  middle. 
Taken  all  in  all,  he  was  a  figure  to  be  noticed  in  any  com 
pany. 

He  came  forward  on  his  rubber  heels  and  stood  at  his 
guest's  elbow. 

"Your  field  is  science,  I  believe?  This  Spencer  was  bound 
for  me  years  ago,  by  a  clever  devil  in  Pittsburg,  of  ail 
places;  Huxley,  too.  My  Darwin  is  hit  and  miss.  Mill  is 
here;  Hume;  the  American  John  Fiske.  By  chance  I  have 
The  Wealth  of  Nations.  Here  is  a  fine  old  book,  Sir  Henry 
Maine's  Ancient  Law.  You  know  it,  of  course?" 

"All  — all!     I   know   them   all,"   murmured   the   little 


QUEED  121 

Doctor,  standing  with  two  books  under  his  arm  and  plucking 
out  a  third.  "I  look  back  sometimes  and  stand  amazed 
at  the  immensity  of  my  reading.  Benjamin  Kidd  —  ha! 
He  won't  be  in  so  many  libraries  when  I  get  through  with 
him.  You  are  rather  strong  on  political  economy,  I  see. 
Alfred  Marshall  does  very  well.  Nothing  much  in  philoso 
phy.  The  Contrat  Social  —  absurd." 

"Do  you  care  for  these? "asked  Nicolovius,  pointing  to  a 
row  of  well-worn  works  of  Bible  criticism.  "Of  course  the 
Germans  are  far  in  the  lead  in  this  field,  and  I  am  unhap 
pily  compelled  to  rely  on  translations.  Still  I  have  — " 

"Here!  Look  here!  I  must  have  this!  I  must  take  this 
book  from  you!"  interrupted  Queed,  rather  excitedly  drag 
ging  a  fat  blue  volume  from  a  lower  shelf.  "Crozier's 
Civilization  and  Progress.  What  a  find!  I  need  it  badly. 
I'll  just  take  it  with  me  now,  shall  I  not?  Eh?" 

"I  shall  be  only  too  happy  to  have  you  take  it,"  said 
Nicolovius,  blandly,  "and  as  many  others  as  you  care  for." 

"  I  '11  have  another  look  and  see,"  said  Queed.  "  My  copy 
of  Crozier  disappeared  some  time  before  I  left  New  York, 
and  so  far  I  have  been  unable  to  replace  it.  I  am  showing 
him  up  completely.  .  .  .  Why,  this  is  singular — extraor 
dinary  !  There 's  not  a  history  among  all  these  books  —  not 
a  volume!" 

Nicolovius's  expression  oddly  changed;  his  whole  face 
seemed  to  tighten.  "No,"  he  said  slowly,  "I  have  some 
reason  to  dislike  history." 

The  young  man  straightened  sharply,  horrified.  "Why 
don't  you  say  at  once  that  you  hate  Life  —  Man  —  the 
Evolution  of  the  Race  —  and  be  done  with  it?" 

"Would  that  seem  so  dreadful  to  you?"  The  old  man's 
face  wore  a  sad  smile.  "  I  might  say  even  that,  I  fear.  Try 
one  of  those  chairs  by  the  fire.  I  shall  not  mind  telling  you 
how  I  came  by  this  feeling.  You  don't  smoke,  I  believe! 
You  miss  a  good  deal,  but  since  you  don't  know  it,  how  does 
it  matter?" 

Nicolovius's  haughty  aloofness,  his  rigid  uncommunica- 


122  QUEED 

tiveness,  his  grand  ducal  bearing  and  the  fact  that  he  paid 
eighteen  dollars  a  week  for  a  suite  had  of  course  made  him 
a  man  of  mark  and  mystery  in  the  boarding-house,  and  in 
the  romancings  of  Miss  Miller  he  had  figured  as  nearly 
everything  from  a  fugitive  crown  prince  to  a  retired  counter 
feiter.  However,  Queed  positively  refused  to  be  drawn  away 
from  the  book-shelves  to  listen  to  his  story,  and  the  old 
professor  was  compelled  to  turn  away  from  the  fire  and  to 
talk,  at  that,  to  the  back  of  the  young  man's  head. 

Nicolovius,  so  he  told  Queed,  was  not  an  American  at  all, 
but  an  Irishman,  born  at  Roscommon,  Connaught.  His 
grandfather  was  a  German,  whence  he  got  his  name.  But 
the  lad  grew  up  in  the  image  of  his  mother's  people.  He 
became  an  intense  patriot  even  for  Ireland,  an  extremist 
among  extremists,  a  notorious  firebrand  in  a  land  where  no 
wood  glows  dully.  Equipped  with  a  good  education  and 
natural  parts,  he  had  become  a  passionate  leader  in  the 
"Young  Ireland"  movement;  was  a  storm-centre  all  during 
the  Home  Rule  agitations;  and  suddenly  outgrew  Ireland 
overnight  during  the  "Parnellism  and  Crime"  era.  He  got 
away  to  the  coast,  disguised  as  a  coster,  and  once  had  the 
pleasure  of  giving  a  lift  in  his  cart  to  the  search-party  who 
wanted  him,  dead  or  alive.  This  was  in  the  year  1882. 

"You  were  mixed  up  in  the  Phoenix  Park  murders,  I 
daresay?"  interjected  Queed,  in  his  matter-of-fact  way. 

"You  will  excuse  my  preference  for  a  certain  indefinite- 
ness,"  said  Nicolovius,  with  great  sweetness. 

On  this  side,  he  had  drifted  accidentally  into  school-teach 
ing,  as  a  means  of  livelihood,  and  stuck  at  it,  in  New  York, 
St.  Paul,  and,  for  many  years,  in  Chicago.  The  need  of  a 
warmer  climate  for  his  health's  sake,  he  said,  had  driven 
him  South,  and  some  three  years  before  an  appointment  at 
Milner's  Collegiate  School  had  brought  him  to  the  city 
which  he  and  the  young  man  now  alike  called  their  own. 

Queed,  still  sacking  the  shelves  for  another  find,  asked  if 
he  had  never  revisited  Ireland. 

"Ah,  no,"  said  Nicolovius,  "there  was  no  gracious  par- 


QUEED  123 

don  for  my  little  peccadillo,  no  statute  of  limitations  to 
run  after  me  and  pat  me  on  the  head.  I  love  England  best 
with  the  sea  between  us.  You  may  fancy  that  a  refugee 
Irishman  has  no  fondness  for  reading  history." 

He  flicked  the  fire-ash  from  his  cigar  and  looked  at  Queed. 
All  the  time  he  talked  he  had  been  watching  the  young  man, 
studying  him,  conning  him  over.  .  .  . 

"My  life  ended  when  I  was  scarcely  older  than  you.  I 
have  been  dead  while  I  was  alive.  .  .  .  God  pity  you, 
young  man,  if  you  ever  taste  the  bitter  misery  of  that!" 

Queed  turned  around  surprised  at  the  sudden  fierceness 
of  the  other's  tone.  Nicolovius  instantly  sprang  up  and 
went  over  to  poke  the  fire;  he  came  back  directly,  smiling 
easily  and  pulling  at  his  long  cigar. 

"  Ah,  well!  Forgive  the  saddening  reminiscences  of  an  old 
man  —  not  a  common  weakness  with  me,  I  assure  you. 
May  I  say,  Mr.  Queed,  how  much  your  intellect,  your  cul 
ture,  your  admirable  —  ah  —  poise  —  amazing  they  seem 
to  me  in  so  young  a  man  —  have  appealed  to  me  among  a 
population  of  Brookes,  By  lashes,  and  Klinkers?  You  are 
the  first  man  in  many  a  day  that  has  inspired  me  with  an 
impulse  toward  friendship  and  confidence.  It  would  be  a 
real  kindness  if  you  'd  come  in  sometimes  of  an  evening." 

At  the  word  " friendship"  the  young  man  flinched  uncon 
trollably.  Was  the  whole  diabolical  world  in  league  to 
spring  out  and  make  friends  with  him? 

"Unfortunately,"  he  said,  with  his  iciest  bow,  "my  time 
is  entirely  engrossed  by  my  work." 

But  as  his  eye  went  round  the  pretty,  dim-lit  room,  he 
could  not  help  contrasting  it  with  the  bleak  Scriptorium 
above,  and  he  added  with  a  change  of  tone  and  a  sigh: — 

"  You  appear  wonderfully  comfortable  here." 

Nicolovius  shrugged.  "So-so,"  he  said  indifferently. 
"However,  I  shall  make  a  move  before  long." 

"Indeed?" 

"I  want  more  space  and  independence,  more  quiet  — 
surcease  from  meeting  fellow-boarders  at  every  step.  I 


124  QUEED 

plan  to  move  into  an  apartment,  or  perhaps  a  modest  little 
house,  if  I  can  manage  it.  For  I  am  not  rich,  unhappily, 
though  I  believe  the  boarders  think  I  am,  because  I  make 
Emma  a  present  of  a  dollar  each  year  at  the  anniversary 
of  the  birth  of  our  Lord." 

Queed  ignored  his  little  pleasantry.  He  was  struck  with 
the  fact  that  Nicolovius  had  described  exactly  the  sort 
of  living  arrangement  that  he  himself  most  earnestly  de 
sired. 

"I  should  have  made  the  move  last  year,"  continued 
Nicolovius,  pulling  at  his  auburn  mustaches,  "except  that 
—  well,  I  am  more  sensitive  to  my  loneliness  as  I  grow  older, 
and  the  fact  was  that  I  lacked  a  congenial  companion  to  share 
a  pleasanter  home  with." 

The  eyes  of  the  two  men  met,  and  they  moved  away  from 
each  other  as  by  common  consent.  Apparently  the  same 
thought  popped  simultaneously  into  both  their  minds. 
Queed  dallied  with  his  thought,  frankly  and  with  the  purest 
unaltruism. 

Though  this  was  the  first  time  he  had  ever  been  in  the 
old  professor's  pretty  room,  it  was  the  third  or  fourth  time 
he  had  been  invited  there.  Nothing  could  be  clearer  than 
that  Nicolovius  liked  him  enormously,  —  where  on  earth 
did  he  get  his  fatal  gift  for  attracting  people?  —  nothing 
than  that  he  was  exactly  the  sort  of  congenial  companion 
the  old  man  desired.  Why  should  n't  he  go  and  live  with 
Nicolovius  in  his  new  home,  the  home  of  perfect  quiet  and 
immunity  from  boarders?  And  unbroken  leisure,  too,  for 
of  course  Nicolovius  would  bear  all  expenses,  and  he  him 
self  would  fly  from  all  remunerative  work  as  from  the  Black 
Death.  Nay  more,  the  old  chap  would  very  likely  be  willing 
to  pay  him  a  salary  for  his  society,  or  at  least,  see  that  he 
was  kept  well  supplied  with  everything  he  needed  —  books 
to  demolish  like  this  one  under  his  arm,  and  .  .  . 

He  looked  up  and  found  the  sardonic  Italian  eyes  of  the 
old  professor  fixed  on  him  with  a  most  curious  expression. 
.  .  .  No,  no!  Better  even  Mrs.  Paynter's  than  solitude 


QUEED  125 

shared  with  this  stagey  old  man,  with  his  repellent  face  and 
his  purring  voice  which  his  eyes  so  belied. 

"I  must  be  going,"  said  Queed  hastily. 

His  host  came  forward  with  suave  expressions  of  regret. 
"However,  I  feel  much  complimented  that  you  came  at  all. 
Pray  honor  me  again  very  soon  — " 

"I'll  return  this  book  sometime,"  continued  the  young 
man,  already  at  the  door.  "You  won't  mind  if  I  mark  it,  of 
course?" 

"  My  dear  sir  —  most  certainly  not.  Indeed  I  hoped  that 
you  would  consent  to  accept  it  for  your  own,  as  a  — " 

"No,  I'll  return  it.  I  daresay  you  will  find,"  he  added 
with  a  faint  smile,  but  his  grossest  one,  "that  my  notes  have 
not  lessened  its  value  exactly!" 

In  the  hall  Queed  looked  at  his  watch;  ten  minutes  to  ten. 
Twenty-live  minutes  to  his  visit  upon  the  old  professor! 

However,  let  us  be  calm  and  just  about  it.  The  twenty- 
five  minutes  was  not  a  flat  loss :  he  had  got  Crozier  by  it. 
Crozier  was  worth  twenty-five  minutes;  thirty-five,  if  it 
came  to  that  —  fifty!  ...  But  how  to  fit  such  a  thing  as 
this  into  the  Schedule  —  and  Klinker's  visits  —  and  the 
time  he  had  given  to  Fifi  to-night  and  very  likely  would  have 
to  give  through  an  endless  chain  of  to-morrows?  Here  was 
the  burning  crux.  Was  it  endurable  that  the  Schedule  must 
be  corrupted  yet  again? 

So  far  as  little  Fifi  was  concerned,  it  turned  out  that  these 
agonies  were  superfluous ;  he  had  helped  her  with  her  lessons 
for  the  last  time.  She  did  not  appear  in  the  dining-room 
the  next  night,  or  the  next,  or  the  next.  Inquiries  from  the 
boarders  drew  from  Mrs.  Paynter  the  information  that  the 
child's  cough  had  pulled  her  down  so  that  she  had  been 
remanded  to  bed  for  a  day  or  two  to  rest  up.  But  resting 
up  appeared  not  to  prove  so  simple  a  process  as  had  been 
anticipated,  and  the  day  or  two  was  soon  running  into 
weeks. 

Halcyon  nights  Queed  enjoyed  in  the  dining-room  in 
Fifi's  absence,  yet  faintly  marred  in  a  most  singular  way 


126  QUEED 

by  the  very  absence  which  alone  made  them  halcyon.  It  is 
a  fact  that  you  cannot  give  to  any  person  fifteen  minutes  of 
valuable  time  every  night,  and  not  have  your  consciousness 
somewhat  involved  in  that  person's  abrupt  disappearance 
from  your  horizon.  Messages  from  Fifi  on  matters  of  most 
trivial  import  came  to  Queed  occasionally,  and  these  served 
to  keep  alive  his  subtle  awareness  of  her  absence.  But  he 
never  took  any  notice  of  the  messages,  not  even  of  the  one 
which  said  that  he  could  look  in  and  see  her  some  afternoon 
if  he  wanted  to. 


XI 

Concerning  a  Plan  to  make  a  Small  Gift  to  a  Fellow-Boarder, 
and  what  it  led  to  in  the  Way  of  Calls;  also  touching  upon 
Mr.  Queed's  Dismissal  from  the  Post,  and  the  Generous 
Resolve  of  the  Young  Lady,  Charles  Weyland. 

THE  State  Department  of  Charities  was  a  rudiment 
ary  affair  in  those  days,  just  as  Queed  had  said. 
Its  appropriation  was  impossibly  meager,  even  with 
the  niggard's  increase  just  wrung  from  the  legislature.  The 
whole  Department  fitted  cozily  into  a  single  room  in  the 
Capitol;  it  was  small  as  a  South  American  army,  this 
Department,  consisting,  indeed,  of  but  the  two  generals. 
But  the  Secretary  and  the  Assistant  Secretary  worked 
together  like  a  team  of  horses.  They  had  already  done 
wonders,  and  their  hopes  were  high  with  still  more  wonders 
to  perform.  In  especial  there  was  the  reformatory.  The 
legislature  had  adjourned  without  paying  any  attention 
to  the  reformatory,  exactly  as  it  had  been  meant  to  do. 
But  a  bill  had  been  introduced,  at  all  events,  and  the  Post 
had  carried  a  second  editorial,  expounding  and  urging  the 
plan;  several  papers  in  the  smaller  cities  of  the  State  had 
followed  the  Post's  lead ;  and  thus  the  issue  had  been  fairly 
launched,  with  the  ground  well  broken  for  a  successful  cam 
paign  two  years  later. 

The  office  of  the  Department  was  a  ship-shape  place,  with 
its  two  desks,  a  big  one  and  a  little  one;  the  typewriter 
table ;  the  rows  and  rows  of  letter-files  on  shelves ;  a  sectional 
bookcase  containing  Charities  reports  from  other  States,  with 
two  shelves  reserved  for  authoritative  books  by  such  writers 
as  Willoughby,  Smathers,  and  Conant.  Here,  doubtless, 
would  some  day  stand  the  colossal  work  of  Queed.  At  the 
big  desk  sat  the  Rev.  Mr.  Dayne,  a  practical  idealist  of  no 


128  QUEED 

common  sort,  a  kind-faced  man  with  a  crisp  brown  mustache. 
At  the  typewriter- table  sat  Sharlee  Weyland,  writing  firm 
letters  to  thirty-one  county  almshouse  keepers.  It  was  hard 
upon  noon.  Sharlee  looked  tired  and  sad  about  the  eyes. 
She  had  not  been  to  supper  at  Mrs.  Paynter's  for  months, 
but  she  went  there  nearly  every  afternoon  from  the  office 
to  see  Fifi,  who  had  been  in  bed  for  four  weeks. 

The  Department  door  opened,  with  no  premonitory 
knock,  and  in  walked,  of  all  people,  Mr.  Queed. 

Sharlee  came  forward  very  cordially  to  greet  the  visitor, 
and  at  once  presented  him  to  the  Secretary.  However  Queed 
dismissed  Mr.  Dayne  very  easily,  and  gazing  at  Sharlee 
sharply  through  his  spectacles,  said: 

"I  should  like  to  speak  to  you  in  private  a  moment." 

"  Certainly,"  said  Sharlee. 

"I'll  step  into  the  hall,"  said  kind-faced  Mr.  Dayne. 

"No,  no.   Indeed  you  must  n't.    We  will." 

Sharlee  faced  the  young  man  in  the  sunlit  hall  with  sym 
pathetic  expectancy  and  some  curiosity  in  her  eyes. 

"There  is,"  he  began  without  preliminaries,  "a  girl  at  the 
house  where  I  board,  who  has  been  confined  to  her  bed  with 
sickness  for  some  weeks.  It  appears  that  she  has  grown  thin 
and  weak,  so  that  they  will  not  permit  her  to  graduate  at 
her  school.  This  involves  a  considerable  disappointment  to 
her." 

"You  are  speaking  of  Fifi,"  said  Sharlee,  gently. 

"That  is  the  girl's  name,  if  it  is  of  any  interest  to  you  — " 

"You  know  she  is  my  first  cousin." 

"Possibly  so,"  he  replied,  as  though  to  say  that  no  one 
had  the  smallest  right  to  hold  him  responsible  for  that.  "  In 
this  connection,  a  small  point  has  arisen  upon  which  advice 
is  required,  the  advice  of  a  woman.  You  happen  to  be  the 
only  other  girl  I  know.  This,"  said  Queed,  "is  why  I  have 
called." 

Sharlee  felt  flattered.  "You  are  most  welcome  to  my 
advice,  Mr.  Queed." 

He  frowned  at  her  through  glasses  that  looked  as  big  and 


QUEED  129 

as  round  as  butter-saucers,  with  an  expression  in  which 
impatience  contended  with  faint  embarrassment. 

"As  her  fellow-lodger,"  he  resumed,  precisely,  "I  have 
been  in  the  habit  of  assisting  this  girl  with  her  studies  and 
have  thus  come  to  take  an  interest  in  her  —  a  small  interest. 
During  her  sickness,  it  seems,  many  of  the  boarders  have 
been  in  to  call  upon  her.  In  a  similar  way,  she  has  sent  me 
several  messages  inviting  me  to  call,  but  I  have  not  been  in 
position  to  accept  any  of  these  invitations.  It  does  not  follow 
that,  because  I  gave  some  of  my  time  in  the  past  to  assisting 
her  with  her  lessons,  I  can  afford  to  give  more  of  it  now  for 
purposes  of — of  mere  sociability.  I  make  the  situation  clear 
to  you?" 

Sharlee,  to  whom  Fifi  had  long  since  made  the  situation 
clear,  puckered  her  brow  like  one  carefully  rehearsing  the 
several  facts.  "Yes,  I  believe  that  is  all  perfectly  clear,  Mr. 
Queed." 

He  hesitated  visibly;  then  his  lips  tightened  and,  gazing 
at  her  with  a  touch  of  something  like  defiance,  he  said:  "On 
the  other  hand,  I  do  not  wish  this  girl  to  think  that  I  bear 
her  ill-will  for  the  time  I  have  given  her  in  the  past.  I  — 
ahem  —  have  therefore  concluded  to  make  her  a  present,  a 
small  gift." 

Sharlee  stood  looking  at  him  without  a  reply. 

"Well?"  said  he,  annoyed.  "I  am  not  certain  what  form 
this  small  gift  had  best  take." 

She  turned  away  from  him  and  walked  to  the  end  of  the 
hall,  where  the  window  was.  To  Queed's  great  perplexity, 
she  stood  there  looking  out  for  some  time,  her  back  toward 
him.  Soon  it  came  into  his  mind  that  she  meant  to  indicate 
that  their  interview  was  over,  and  this  attitude  seemed  ex 
tremely  strange  to  him.  He  could  not  understand  it  at  all. 

"I  fear  that  you  have  failed  to  follow  me,  after  all,"  he 
called  after  her,  presently.  "This  was  the  point  — as  to 
what  form  the  gift  should  take  —  upon  which  I  wanted  a 
woman's  advice." 

"I  understand."    She  came  back  to  him  slowly,  with 


130  QUEED 

bright  eyes.  "  I  know  it  would  please  Fifi  very  much  to  have 
a  gift  from  you.  Had  you  thought  at  all,  yourself,  what  you 
would  like  to  give?" 

"Yes,"  he  said,  frowning  vaguely,  "I  examined  the  shop 
windows  as  I  came  down  and  pretty  well  decided  on  some 
thing.  Then  at  the  last  minute  I  was  not  altogether 
sure." 

"Yes?  Tell  me  what." 

"I  thought  I  would  give  her  a  pair  of  silk  mitts." 

Sharlee's  eyes  never  left  his,  and  her  face  was  very  sweet 
and  grave. 

"White  silk  ones,"  said  he —  "or  black  either,  for  that 
matter,  for  the  price  is  the  same." 

"Well,"  said  she,  "why  did  you  select  mitts,  specially?" 

"What  first  attracted  me  to  them,"  he  said  simply,  "was 
that  they  came  to  precisely  the  sum  I  had  planned  to  spend : 
seventy-five  cents." 

The  little  corrugation  in  Sharlee's  brow  showed  how  care 
fully  she  was  thinking  over  the  young  man's  suggestion 
from  all  possible  points  of  view.  You  could  easily  follow 
her  thought  by  her  speaking  sequence  of  expressions. 
Clearly  it  ran  like  this:  "Mitts  —  splendid!  Just  the  gift 
fora  girl  who's  sick  in  bed.  The  one  point  to  consider 
is,  could  any  other  gift  possibly  be  better?  No,  surely  none. 
.  .  .  Wait  a  minute,  though!  Let's  take  this  thing  slowly 
and  be  absolutely  sure  we're  right  before  we  go  ahead.  .  .  . 
Run  over  carefully  all  the  things  that  are  ever  used  as  gifts. 
Anything  there  that  is  better  than  mitts?  Perhaps, 
after  all  ...  Mitts  .  .  .  Why,  look  here,  is  n't  there  one 
small  objection,  one  trifling  want  of  the  fulness  of  perfection 
to  be  raised  against  the  gift  of  mitts?" 

"There's  this  point  against  mitts,"  said  Sharlee  slowly. 
"Fifi  's  in  bed  now,  and  I'm  afraid  she's  likely  to  be  there 
for  some  time.  Of  course  she  could  not  wear  the  mitts  in 
bed.  She  would  have  to  tuck  them  away  in  a  drawer  some 
where.  Don't  you  think  it  might  be  a  good  idea  to  give  her 
something  that  she  could  enjoy  at  once  —  something  that 


QUEED  131 

would  give  her  pleasure  now  and  so  help  to  lighten  these 
tedious  hours  while  she  must  be  in  her  room?" 

The  mitts  were  the  child  of  Queed's  own  brain.  Uncon 
sciously  he  had  set  his  heart  on  them ;  but  his  clock-like  mind 
at  once  grasped  the  logic  of  this  argument,  and  he  met  it 
generously. 

"Your  point  is  well  taken.  It  proves  the  wisdom  of 
getting  the  advice  of  a  woman  on  such  a  matter.  Now  I  had 
thought  also  of  a  book  — " 

"I'll  tell  you!"  cried  Sharlee,  nearly  bowled  over  by  a 
brilliant  inspiration.  "A  great  many  men  that  I  know  make 
it  a  rule  to  send  flowers  to  girls  that  are  sick,  and  —  " 

"Flowers!" 

"It  does  seem  foolish  —  such  a  waste,  does  n't  it?  —  but 
really  you've  no  idea  how  mad  girls  are  about  flowers,  or 
how  much  real  joy  they  can  bring  into  a  sick-room.  And,  by 
changing  the  water  often,  and  —  so  on,  they  last  a  long  time, 
really  an  incredible  time  — " 

"You  recommend  flowers,  then?  Very  well/*  he  said 
resolutely  —  "that  is  settled  then.  Now  as  to  the  kind. 
I  have  only  a  botanical  knowledge  of  flowers  —  shall  we 
say  something  in  asters,  perhaps,  chrysanthemums  or 
dahlias?  What  is  your  advice  as  to  that?" 

"Well,  I  advise  roses." 

"Roses  —  good.  I  had  forgotten  them  for  the  moment. 
White  roses?" 

A  little  shiver  ran  through  her.  "No,  no!  Let  them  be 
the  reddest  you  can  find." 

"Next,  as  to  the  cost  of  red  roses." 

"Oh,  there'll  be  no  trouble  about  that.  Simply  tell  the 
florist  that  you  want  seventy-five  cents'  worth,  and  he  will 
give  you  a  fine  bunch  of  them.  By  the  way,  I  'd  better  put 
his  name  and  address  down  on  a  piece  of  paper  for  you.  Be 
sure  to  go  to  this  one  because  I  know  him,  and  he 's  extremely 
reliable." 

He  took  the  slip  from  her,  thanked  her,  bowed  gravely, 
and  turned  to  go.  A  question  had  risen  involuntarily  to 


132  QUEED 

the  tip  of  her  tongue;  it  hung  there  for  a  breath,  its  fate  in 
the  balance;  and  then  she  released  it,  casually,  when  another 
second  would  have  been  too  late. 

"How  is  your  work  on  the  Post  going?" 

He  wheeled  as  though  she  had  struck  him,  and  looked  at 
her  with  a  sudden  odd  hardening  of  the  lower  part  of  his 
face. 

"The  Post  discharged  me  this  morning." 

"Oh—" 

It  was  all  that  she  could  say,  for  she  knew  it  very  well. 
She  had  had  it  from  Colonel  Cowles  two  days  before  it  hap 
pened,  which  was  three  days  after  the  April  meeting  of  the 
directors.  Charles  Gardiner  West,  who  was  to  have  raised 
his  voice  in  behalf  of  Mr.  Queed  on  that  occasion,  happened 
not  to  be  present  at  all.  Having  effected  the  dissolution  of 
Semple  and  West,  he  had  gone  to  the  country  for  a  month's 
rest,  in  preparation  for  that  mapping  out  of  collegiate  plans 
which  was  to  precede  his  tour  of  Europe.  Hence  the  direct 
ors,  hearing  no  protests  from  intercessors,  unanimously 
bestowed  discretion  upon  the  Colonel  to  replace  the  tran 
scendental  scientist  with  a  juicier  assistant  at  a  larger  salary. 

"At  least,"  the  young  man  qualified,  with  a  curious  mix 
ture  of  aggressiveness  and  intense  mortification,  "the  Post 
will  discharge  me  on  the  I5th  day  of  May  unless  I  show 
marked  improvement.  I  believe  that  improvement  was 
exactly  the  word  the  estimable  Colonel  employed." 

"I'm  awfully  sorry, ' '  said  Sharlee  —  * ' awfully !  But  after 
all,  you  want  only  some  routine  hack-work — any  routine 
hack-work  —  to  establish  a  little  income.  It  will  not  be  very 
hard  to  find  something  else,  as  good  or  even  better." 

"You  do  not  appear  to  grasp  the  fact  that,  apart  from 
any  considerations  of  that  sort,  this  is  an  unpleasant,  a 
most  offensive  thing  to  have  happen  — " 

"Oh,  but  that  is  just  what  it  isn't,  Mr.  Queed,"  said 
Sharlee,  who  quite  failed  to  appreciate  his  morbid  tender 
ness  for  even  the  least  of  his  intellectual  offspring.  "You 
have  taken  no  pride  in  the  newspaper  work ;  you  look  down 


QUEED  133 

on  it  as  altogether  beneath  you.  You  cannot  mind  this  in 
any  personal  way — " 

"I  mind  it,"  said  he,  "  like  the  devil." 

The  word  fell  comically  from  his  lips,  but  Sharlee,  leaning 
against  the  shut  door,  looked  at  him  with  grave  sympathy 
in  her  eyes. 

"Mr.  Queed,  if  you  had  tried  to  write  nursery  rhymes 
and  —  failed,  would  you  have  taken  it  to  heart?" 

"  Never  mind  arguing  it.  In  fact,  I  don't  know  that  I 
could  explain  it  to  you  in  a  thoroughly  logical  and  convincing 
way.  The  central  fact,  the  concrete  thing,  is  that  I  do  object 
most  decidedly.  I  have  spent  too  much  time  in  equipping 
myself  to  express  valuable  ideas  in  discriminating  language 
to  be  kicked  out  of  a  second-rate  newspaper  office  like  an 
incompetent  office-boy.  Of  course  I  shall  not  submit  to  it." 

"Do  you  care  to  tell  me  what  you  mean  to  do?" 

"Do!"  He  hit  the  door-post  a  sudden  blow  with  an  un 
expectedly  large  hand.  "I  shall  have  myself  elected  editor 
of  the  Post." 

"  But  —  but  —  but  — "  said  the  girl,  taken  aback  by  the 
largeness  of  this  order —  "But  you  don't  expect  to  oust 
Colonel  Cowles?" 

"We  are  not  necessarily  speaking  of  to-morrow  or  next 
day.  An  actuary  will  tell  you  that  I  am  likely  to  outlive 
Colonel  Cowles.  I  mean,  first,  to  have  my  dismissal  re 
called,  and,  second,  to  be  made  regular  assistant  editor  at 
three  times  my  present  salary.  That  is  my  immediate  reply 
to  the  directors  of  the  Post.  I  am  willing  to  let  the  editor 
ship  wait  till  old  Cowles  dies." 

"Tell  me,"  said  Sharlee,  "would  you  personally  like  to 
be  editor  of  the  Post  ?" 

" Like  it!  I'll  resign  the  day  after  they  elect  me.  Call  it 
sheer  wounded  vanity  —  anything  you  like !  The  name 
makes  no  difference.  I  know  only  that  I  will  have  the  editor 
ship  for  a  day  —  and  all  for  the  worthless  pleasure  of  pitch 
ing  it  in  their  faces."  He  looked  past  her  out  of  the  window, 
and  his  light  gray  eyes  filled  with  an  indescribable  bitterness. 


134  QUEED 

"And  to  have  the  editorship,"  he  thought  out  loud,  "  I  must 
unlearn  everything  that  I  know  about  writing,  and  delib 
erately  learn  to  write  like  a  demagogic  ass." 

Sharlee  tapped  the  calcimine  with  her  pointed  finger 
nails.  He  spoke,  as  ever,  with  overweening  confidence,  but 
she  knew  that  he  would  never  win  any  editorship  in  this 
spirit.  He  was  going  at  the  quest  with  a  new  burst  of  intel 
lectual  contempt,  though  it  was  this  very  intellectual  con 
tempt  that  had  led  to  his  downfall. 

"But  your  own  private  work?" 

"Don't  speak  of  it,  I  beg!"  He  flinched  uncontrollably; 
but  of  his  own  accord  he  added,  in  carefully  repressed  tones: 
"To  qualify  for  the  editorship  of  course  means  —  a  terrible 
interruption  and  delay.  It  means  that  /  must  side-track  My 
Book  for  two  months  or  even  longer  /" 

Two  months !  It  would  take  him  five  years  and  probably 
he  would  not  be  qualified  then. 

Sharlee  hesitated.  "Have  you  fully  made  up  your  mind 
to  —  to  be  editor?" 

He  turned  upon  her  vehemently.  "May  I  ask  you  never 
to  waste  my  time  with  questions  of  that  sort.  I  never  — 
never  —  say  anything  until  I  have  fully  made  up  my  mind 
about  it.  Good-morning." 

"No,  no,  no!  Don't  go  yet!  Please  —  I  want  to  speak  to 
you  a  minute." 

He  stopped  and  turned,  but  did  not  retrace  the  three 
steps  he  had  taken.  Sharlee  leaned  against  the  door  and 
looked  away  from  him,  out  into  the  park. 

The  little  Doctor  was  badly  in  need  of  a  surgical  opera 
tion.  Somebody  must  perform  it  for  him,  or  his  whole  life 
was  a  dusty  waste.  That  he  still  had  glimmerings,  he  had 
shown  this  very  hour,  in  wanting  to  make  a  gift  to  his  sick 
little  fellow-lodger.  His  resentment  over  his  dismissal  from 
the  Post,  too,  was  an  unexpectedly  human  touch  in  him. 
But  in  the  same  breath  with  these  things  the  young  man 
had  showed  himself  at  his  worst:  the  glimmerings  were  so 
overlaid  with  an  incredible  snobbery  of  the  mind,  so  en- 


QUEED  135 

crusted  with  the  rankest  and  grossest  egotism,  that  soon 
they  must  flutter  and  die  out,  leaving  him  stone-blind 
against  the  sunshine  and  the  morning.  No  scratch  could 
penetrate  that  Achilles-armor  of  self-sufficiency.  There 
must  be  a  shock  to  break  it  apart,  or  a  vicious  stabbing  to 
cut  through  it  to  such  spark  as  was  still  alive. 

Somebody  must  administer  that  shock  or  do  that  stab 
bing.  Why  not  she?  He  would  hate  the  sight  of  her  for- 
evermore,  but  .  .  . 

"Mr.  Queed,"  said  Sharlee,  turning  toward  him,  "you 
let  me  see,  from  what  you  are  doing  this  morning,  that  you 
think  of  Fifi  as  your  friend.  I  'd  like  to  ask  if  you  think  of 
me  in  that  way,  too." 

O  Lord,  Lord!  Here  was  another  one! 

"No,"  he  said  positively.  "Think  of  you  as  I  do  of  Fifi! 
No,  no!  No,  I  do  not." 

"I  don't  mean  to  ask  if  you  think  of  me  as  you  do  of 
Fifi.  Of  course  I  am  sure  you  don't.  I  only  mean  —  let  me 
put  it  this  way :  Do  you  believe  that  I  have  your  —  inter 
ests  at  heart,  and  would  like  to  do  anything  I  could  to  help 
you?" 

He  thought  this  over  warily.  Doubtless  doomed  Smathers 
would  have  smiled  to  note  the  slowness  with  which  his  great 
rival's  mind  threshed  out  such 'a  question  as  this. 

"If  you  state  your  proposition  in  that  way,  I  reply,  ten 
tatively,  yes." 

"Then  can  you  spare  me  half  an  hour  to-night  after 
supper?" 

"For  what  purpose?" 

"  For  you  and  me,"  she  smiled.  "  I  'd  like  you  to  come  and 
see  me,  at  my  house,  where  we  could  really  have  a  little 
talk.  You  see,  I  know  Colonel  Cowles  very  well  indeed,  and 
I  have  read  the  Post  for  oh,  many,  many  years!  In  this 
way  I  know  something  about  the  kind  of  articles  people 
here  like  to  read,  and  about  —  what  is  needed  to  write  such 
articles.  I  think  I  might  make  a  suggestion  or  two  that  — 
would  help.  Will  you  come?" 


136  QUEED 

After  somewhat  too  obvious  a  consideration,  Queed  con 
sented.  Sharlee  thanked  him. 

"I'll  put  my  address  down  on  the  back  of  that  paper, 
shall  I?  And  I  think  I'll  put  my  name,  too,  for  I  don't 
believe  you  have  the  faintest  idea  what  it  is." 

"Oh,  yes.  The  name  is  Miss  Charlie  Weyland.  It  appears 
that  you  were  named  after  a  boy?" 

"Oh,  it's  only  a  silly  nickname.  Here's  your  little  direc 
tory  back.  I'll  be  very  glad  to  see  you  —  at  half- past  eight, 
shall  we  say?  But,  Mr.  Queed  —  don't  come  unless  you  feel 
sure  that  I  really  want  to  help.  For  I  'm  afraid  I  '11  have  to 
say  a  good  deal  that  will  make  you  very  mad." 

He  bowed  and  walked  away.  Sharlee  went  to  the  tele 
phone  and  called  Bartlett's,  the  florist.  She  told  Mr.  Bart- 
lett  that  a  young  man  would  come  in  there  in  a  few  minutes 
—  full  description  of  the  young  man  —  asking  for  seventy- 
five  cents'  worth  of  red  roses;  Mr.  Bartlett  would  please  give 
him  two  dozen  roses,  and  charge  the  difference  to  her,  Miss 
Weyland ;  the  entire  transaction  to  be  kept  discreetly  quiet. 

However  the  transaction  was  not  kept  entirely  quiet. 
The  roses  were  delivered  promptly,  and  became  the  chief 
topic  of  conversation  at  Mrs.  Paynter's  dinner-table. 
Through  an  enforced  remark  of  Mr.  Queed's,  and  the  later 
discursive  gossip  of  the  boarders,  it  became  disseminated 
over  the  town  that  Bartlett's  was  selling  American  Beauties 
at  thirty-seven  and  a  half  cents  a  dozen,  and  the  poor  man 
had  to  buy  ten  inches,  double  column,  in  the  Post  next 
morning  to  get  himself  straightened  out  and  reestablish 
Bartlett's  familiar  quotations. 


XII 

M ore  Consequences  of  the  Plan  about  the  Gift,  and  of  how  Mr. 
Queed  drinks  his  Medicine  like  a  Man;  Fifi  on  Men,  and 
how  they  do;  Second  Corruption  of  The  Sacred  Schedule. 

QUEED 'S  irrational  impulse  to  make  Fifi  a  small  gift 
cost  him  the  heart  of  his  morning.  A  call  would  have 
been  cheaper,  after  all.  Nor  was  the  end  yet.  In  this 
world  it  never  is,  where  one  event  invariably  hangs  by  the 
tail  of  another  in  ruthless  concatenation.  Starting  out  for 
Open-air  Pedestrianism  at  4.45  that  afternoon,  the  young 
man  was  waylaid  in  the  hall  by  Mrs.  Paynter,  at  the  very 
door  of  the  big  bedroom  into  which  Fifi  had  long  since  been 
moved.  The  landlady,  backing  Queed  against  the  banis 
ters,  told  him  how  much  her  daughter  had  been  pleased  by 
his  beautiful  remembrance.  The  child,  she  said,  wanted 
particularly  to  thank  him  herself,  and  would  n't  he  please 
come  in  and  see  her  just  a  moment  ? 

As  Mrs.  Paynter  threw  oper*.  the  door  in  the  act  of  making 
the  extraordinary  request,  escape  was  impossible.  Queed 
found  himself  inside  the  room  before  he  knew  what  he  was 
doing.  As  for  Mrs.  Paynter,  she  somewhat  treacherously 
slipped  away  to  consult  with  Laura  as  to  what  for  supper. 

It  was  a  mild  sunny  afternoon,  with  a  light  April  wind 
idly  kicking  at  the  curtains.  Fifi  sat  over  by  the  open  win 
dow  in  a  tilted-back  Morris  chair,  a  sweet-faced  little  thing, 
all  eyes  and  pallor.  From  her  many  covers  she  extricated  a 
fragile  hand,  frilled  with  the  sleeve  of  a  pretty  flowered 
kimono. 

"Look  at  them!  Are  n't  they  glorious!" 

On  a  table  at  her  elbow  his  roses  nodded  from  a  wide- 
lipped  vase,  a  gorgeous  riot  of  flame  and  fragrance.  Gaz- 


138  QUEED 

ing  at  them,  the  young  man  marvelled  at  his  own  princely 
prodigality. 

"I  don't  know  how  to  thank  you  for  them,  Mr.  Queed, 
They  are  so,  so  sweet,  and  I  do  love  roses  so!" 

Indeed  her  joy  in  them  was  too  obvious  to  require  any 
words.  Queed  decided  to  say  nothing  about  the  mitts. 

"I'm  glad  that  they  please  you,"  said  he,  pulling  himself 
together  for  the  ordeal  of  the  call.  "How  are  you  getting 
along  up  here?  Very  well,  I  trust?" 

"Fine.  It's  so  quiet  and  nice.  .  .  .  And  I  don't  mind 
about  graduating  a  bit  any  more.  Is  n't  that  funny?" 

"You  must  hurry  up  and  get  well  and  return  to  the  din 
ing-room  again,  F —  F — -  Fifi  — ,  and  to  the  algebra  les 
sons—" 

"Don't,"  said  Fifi.  "I  can't  bear  it." 

But  she  whisked  at  her  eyes  with  a  tiny  dab  of  a  hand 
kerchief,  and  when  she  looked  at  him  she  was  smiling,  quite 
clear  and  happy. 

"Have  you  missed  me  since  I  stopped  coming?" 

"Missed  you?"  he  echoed,  exactly  as  he  had  done  before. 

But  this  time  Fifi  said,  shamelessly,  "I'll  bet  you  have! 
—  Haven't  you?" 

Come,  Mr.  Queed,  be  honest.  You  are  supposed  to  have 
the  scientist's  passion  for  veracity.  You  mercilessly  demand 
the  truth  from  others.  Now  take  some  of  your  own  medi 
cine.  Stand  out  like  a  man.  Have  you  or  have  you  not 
missed  this  girl  since  she  stopped  coming? 

"Yes,"  said  the  little  Doctor,  rather  hollowly,  "I  ... 
have  missed  you." 

Fifi's  smile  became  simply  brazen.  "Do  you  know  what, 
Mr.  Queed?  You  like  me  lots  more  than  you  will  say  you 
do." 

The  young  man  averted  his  eyes.  But  for  some  time  there 
had  been  in  his  mind  the  subtle  consciousness  of  something 
left  undone,  an  occasion  which  he  had  failed  to  meet  with 
the  final  word  of  justice.  Since  he  had  been  in  the  room,  a 
vague,  unwelcome  resolve  had  been  forming  in  his  mind, 


QUEED  139 

and  at  Fifi's  bold  words,  it  hardened  into  final  shape.  He 
drew  a  deep  breath. 

"You  referred  to  me  as  your  friend  once,  F  —  Fifi.  And 
I  said  that  I  was  not." 

"I  know." 

"  I  was  —  mistaken  "  — so  he  drained  his  medicine  to  the 
dregs.  "I  .  .  .  am  your  friend." 

Now  the  child's  smile  was  the  eternal  motherly.  "Lor*, 
Mr.  Queed,  I  knew  it  all  the  time." 

Queed  looked  at  the  floor.  The  sight  of  Fifi  affected  him 
most  curiously  to-day.  He  felt  strangely  ill  at  ease  with  her, 
only  the  more  so  because  she  was  so  amazingly  at  home  with 
him.  She  wore  her  reddish-brown  hair  not  rounded  up  in 
front  as  of  old,  but  parted  smoothly  in  the  middle,  and  this 
only  emphasized  the  almost  saintly  purity  of  her  wasted 
little  face.  Her  buoyant  serenity  puzzled  and  disconcerted 
him. 

Meantime  Fifi  was  examining  Queed  carefully.  " You've 
been  doing  something  to  yourself,  Mr.  Queed!  What  is  it? 
Why,  you  look  ten  times  better  than  even  four  weeks  ago!" 

"I  think,"  he  said  drearily,  "it  must  be  Klinker's  Exer 
cises.  I  give  them,"  broke  from  him,  "one  hour  and  twenty 
minutes  a  day!" 

But  he  pulled  himself  together,  conscientiously  deter 
mined  to  take  the  cheery  view  with  Fifi. 

"It  is  an  extraordinary  thing,  but  I  am  feeling  better, 
physically  and  mentally,  than  I  ever  felt  before,  and  this 
though  I  never  had  a  really  sick  day  in  my  life.  It  must  be 
the  exercises,  for  that  is  the  only  change  I  have  made  in  my 
habits.  Yet  I  never  supposed  that  exercise  had  any  such 
practical  value  as  that.  However,"  he  went  on  slowly,  "I 
am  beginning  to  believe  that  there  are  several  things  in 
this  world  that  I  do  not  understand." 

Here,  indeed,  was  a  most  humiliating,  an  epoch-making, 
confession  to  come  from  the  little  Doctor.  It  was  accom 
panied  with  a  vague  smile,  intended  to  be  cheering  and  just 
the  thing  for  a  sick-room.  But  the  dominant  note  in  this 


140  QUEED 

smile  was  bewildered  and  depressed  helplessness,  and  at  it 
the  maternal  instinct  sprang  full-grown  in  Fin's  thin  little 
bosom.  A  passionate  wish  to  mother  the  little  Doctor  tugged 
at  her  heart. 

"You  know  what  you  need,  Mr.  Queed?  Friends  —  lots 
of  good  friends  — " 

He  winced  as  from  a  blow.   "  I  assure  you  — " 

"Yes  —  you  —  DO!"  said  Fifi,  with  surprising  emphasis 
for  so  weak  a  little  voice.  "You  need  first  a  good  girl  friend, 
one  lots  older  and  better  than  me  —  one  just  like  Sharlee. 
O  if  only  you  and  she  would  be  friends !  —  she  'd  be  the  very 
best  in  the  world !  And  then  you  need  men  friends,  plenty  of 
them,  and  to  go  around  with  them,  and  everything.  You 
ought  to  like  men  more,  Mr.  Queed!  You  ought  to  learn  to 
be  like  them,  and  — " 

"Be  like  them!"  he  interrupted,  " I  am  like  them.  Why,11 
he  conceded  generously,  "I  am  one  of  them." 

Fifi  dismissed  this  with  a  smile,  but  he  immediately 
added:  "Has  it  occurred  to  you  that,  apart  from  my  greater 
concentration  on  my  work,  I  am  different  from  other  men?" 

"Why,  Mr.  Queed,  you  are  no  more  like  them  than  I  am! 
You  don't  do  any  of  the  things  they  do.  You  don't — " 

"Such  as  what?  Now,  Fifi,  let  us  be  definite  as  we  go 
along.  Suppose  that  it  was  my  ambition  to  be,  as  you  say, 
like  other  men.  Just  what  things,  in  your  opinion,  should  I 
do?" 

"Well,  smoke  —  that's  one  thing  that  all  men  do.  And 
fool  around  more  with  people  —  laugh  and  joke,  and  tell 
funny  stories  and  all.  And  then  you  could  take  an  interest 
in  your  appearance  —  your  clothes,  you  know;  and  be 
interested  in  all  sorts  of  things  going  on  around  you,  like 
politics  and  baseball.  And  go  to  see  girls  and  take  them 
out  sometimes,  like  to  the  theatre.  Some  men  that  are 
popular  drink,  but  of  course  I  don't  care  for  that." 

Fifi,  of  course,  had  no  idea  that  the  little  Doctor's  world 
had  been  shattered  to  its  axis  that  morning  by  three  min 
utes'  talk  from  Colonel  Cowles.  Therefore,  though  con- 


QUEED  141 

scious  that  there  never  was  a  man  who  did  not  get  a  certain 
pleasure  from  talking  himself  over,  she  was  secretly  sur 
prised  at  the  patience,  even  the  interest,  with  which  he 
listened  to  her.  She  would  have  been  still  more  surprised 
to  know  that  his  wonderful  memory  was  nailing  down  every 
word  with  machine-like  accuracy. 

She  expounded  her  little  thesis  in  considerable  detail,  and 
at  the  end  he  said :  — 

"As  I  've  told  you,  Fifi,  my  first  duty  is  toward  my  book 
—  to  give  it  to  the  cause  of  civilization  at  the  earliest  pos 
sible  moment.  Therefore,  the  whole  question  is  one  of  time, 
rather  than  of  deliberate  personal  inclination.  At  present 
I  literally  cannot  afford  to  give  time  to  matters  which,  while 
doubtless  pleasant  enough  in  their  fashion  — " 

" That's  what  you  would  have  said  about  the  exercise, 
two  months  ago.  And  now  look,  how  it 's  helped  you !  And 
then,  Mr.  Queed  —  are  you  happy?" 

Surprised  and  a  little  amused,  he  replied:  "Really,  I've 
never  stopped  to  think.  I  should  say,  though,  that  I  was 
perfectly  content." 

Fifi  laughed  and  coughed.  "There's  a  big  difference  — 
isn't  there?  Why,  it's  just  like  the  exercise,  Mr.  Queed. 
Before  you  began  it  you  were  just  not  sick  ;  now  you  are  very 
well.  That 's  the  difference  between  content  and  happiness. 
Now  I,"  she  ran  on,  "am  very,  very  happy.  I  wake  up  in 
the  mornings  so  glad  that  I  'm  alive  that  sometimes  I  can 
hardly  bear  it,  and  all  through  the  day  it 's  like  something 
singing  away  inside  of  me!  Are  you  like  that?" 

No,  Mr.  Queed  must  confess  that  he  was  not  like  that. 
Indeed,  few  looking  at  his  face  at  this  moment  would  ever 
have  suspected  him  of  it.  Fifi  regarded  him  with  a  kind  of 
wistful  sadness,  but  he  missed  the  glance,  being  engaged  in 
consulting  his  great  watch;  after  which  he  sprang  noisily 
to  his  feet,  horrified  at  himself. 

"Good  heavens  —  it's  ten  minutes  past  five!  I  must  go 
immediately.  Why,  I'm  twenty-five  minutes  behind  My 
Schedule!" 


142  QUEED 

Fifi  smiled  through  her  wistfulness.  "  Don't  ask  me  to  be 
sorry,  Mr.  Queed,  because  I  don't  think  I  can.  You  see,  I 
have  n't  taken  up  a  minute  of  your  time  for  nearly  a  month, 
so  I  was  entitled  to  some  of  it  to-day." 

You  see!  Hadn't  he  figured  it  exactly  right  from  the 
beginning?  Once  give  a  human  being  a  moment  of  your 
time,  as  a  special  and  extraordinary  kindness,  and  before 
you  can  turn  around  there  that  being  is  claiming  it  whole 
sale  as  a  matter-of-course  right ! 

"  It  was  so  sweet  of  you  to  send  me  these  flowers,  and  then 
to  come  and  see  me,  too.  .  .  .  Do  you  know,  it 's  been  the 
very  best  day  I've  had  since  I've  been  sick,  and  you've 
made  it  so!" 

"It's  all  right.  Well,  good-bye,  Fifi." 

Fifi  held  out  both  her  tiny  hands,  and  he  received  them 
because,  in  the  sudden  emergency,  he  could  think  of  no  way 
of  avoiding  them. 

"You'll  remember  what  I  said  about  friends,  and  men  — 
won't  you,  Mr.  Queed?*  Remember  it  begins  with  liking 
people,  liking  everybody.  Then  when  you  really  like  them 
you  want  to  do  things  for  them,  and  that  is  happiness." 

He  looked  surprised  at  this  definition  of  happiness,  and 
then:  "Oh  —  I  see.  That's  your  religion,  is  n't  it?" 

"No,  it's  just  common  sense." 

"I'll  remember.   Well,  Fifi,  good-bye." 

"Good-bye  —  and  thank  you  for  everything." 

Into  her  eyes  had  sprung  a  tenderness  which  he  was  far 
from  understanding.  But  he  did  not  like  the  look  of  it  in 
the  least,  and  he  extricated  his  hands  from  the  gentle 
clasp  with  some  abruptness. 

From  the  safe  distance  of  the  door  he  looked  back,  and 
wondered  why  Fifi's  great  eyes  were  fixed  so  solemnly  on 
him. 

"Well  —  good-bye,  again.   Hurry  up  and  get  well  — " 

"Good-bye  —  oh,  good-bye,"  said  Fifi,  and  turned  her 
head  toward  the  open  window  with  the  blue  skies  beyond. 

Did  Fifi  know?  How  many  have  vainly  tortured  themselves 


QUEED  143 

with  that  question,  as  they  have  watched  dear  ones  slipping 
without  a  word  down  the  slopes  to  the  dark  Valley!  If  this 
child  knew  that  her  name  had  been  read  out  for  the  greater 
Graduation,  she  gave  no  sign.  Sometimes  in  the  mornings  she 
cried  a  little,  without  knowing  why.  Sometimes  she  said  a 
vague,  sad  little  thing  that  brought  her  mother's  heart, 
stone  cold,  to  her  mouth.  But  her  talk  was  mostly  very 
bright  and  hopeful.  Ten  minutes  before  Queed  came  in  she 
had  been  telling  Mrs.  Paynter  about  something  she  would 
do  in  the  fall.  If  sometimes  you  would  swear  that  she  knew 
there  would  never  be  another  fall  for  her,  her  very  next 
remark  might  confound  you.  So  her  little  face  turned  easily 
to  the  great  river  with  the  shining  farther  shore,  and,  for 
her  part,  there  would  be  no  sadness  of  farewell  when  she 
embarked. 

By  marvelous  work,  Queed  closed  up  the  twenty-five 
minutes  of  time  he  had  bestowed  upon  Fifi,  and  pulled  into 
supper  only  three  minutes  behind  running-time.  After 
wards,  he  sat  in  the  Scriptorium,  his  face  like  a  carven 
image,  the  sacred  Schedule  in  his  hands.  For  it  had  come 
down  to  that.  Either  he  must  at  any  cost  hew  his  way  back 
to  the  fastness  of  his  early  days,  or  he  must  corrupt  the 
Schedule  yet  again. 

Every  minute  that  he  took  away  from  his  book  meant 
just  that  much  delay  in  giving  the  great  work  to  the  world. 
That  fact  was  the  eternal  backbone  of  all  his  consciousness. 
On  the  other  balance  of  his  personal  equation,  there  was 
Buck  Klinker  and  there  was  Fifi  Paynter. 

Klinker  evidently  felt  that  all  bars  were  down  as  to  him. 
It  would  be  a  hard  world  indeed  if  a  trainer  was  denied  free 
access  to  his  only  pupil,  and  Klinker,  though  he  had  but 
the  one,  was  always  in  as  full  blast  as  Muldoon's.  He  had 
acquired  a  habit  of  "dropping  in"  at  all  hours,  especially 
late  at  night,  which,  to  say  the  least,  was  highly  wasteful 
of  time.  It  was  Queed's  privilege  to  tell  Klinker  that  he 
must  keep  away  from  the  Scriptorium;  but  in  that  case 
Klinker  might  fairly  retort  that  he  would  no  longer  give  the 


144  QUEED 

Doc  free  physical  culture.  Did  he  care  to  bring  that  issue 
to  the  touch?  No,  he  did  not.  In  fact,  he  must  admit  that 
he  had  a  distinct  need  of  Buck,  a  distinct  dependence  upon 
him,  for  awhile  yet  at  any  rate.  So  he  could  make  no  elimi 
nation  of  the  non-essential  there. 

Then  there  was  Fifi.  In  a  week,  or  possibly  two  weeks, 
Fifi  would  doubtless  reappear  in  his  dining-room,  and  if  she 
had  no  lessons  to  trouble  him  with,  she  would  at  any  rate 
feel  herself  free  to  talk  to  him  whenever  the  whim  moved  her. 
Had  she  not  let  out  this  very  day  that  she  considered  that 
she  had  a  kind  of  title  to  his  time?  So  it  would  be  to  the 
end  of  the  chapter.  It  had  been  his  privilege  to  tell  Fifi  that 
he  could  not  spare  her  another  minute  of  time  till  his  work 
was  finished.  .  .  .  Had  been  —  but  no  longer  was.  Look 
ing  back  now,  he  found  it  impossible  to  reconstruct  the  chain 
of  impulse  and  circumstance  which  had  trapped  him  into 
it,  but  the  stark  fact  was  that  his  own  lips  had  authorized 
Fifi  to  profane  at  will  his  holy  time.  Not  three  hours  before 
he  had  been  betrayed  into  weakly  telling  her  that  he  was 
her  friend.  He  was  a  man  of  truth  and  honor.  He  could  not 
possibly  get  back  of  that  confession  of  friendship,  or  of  the 
privileges  it  bestowed.  So  there  was  no  elimination  of  the 
non-essential  he  could  make  there. 

These  were  the  short  and  ugly  facts.  And  now  he  must 
take  official  cognizance  of  them. 

With  a  leaden  heart  and  the  hands  of  lamentation,  he 
took  the  Schedule  to  pieces  and  laboriously  fitted  it  together 
again  with  a  fire -new  item  in  its  midst.  The  item  was 
Human  Intercourse,  and  to  it  he  allotted  the  sum  of  thirty 
minutes  per  diem. 

It  was  a  historic  moment  in  his  life,  and,  unlike  most  men 
at  such  partings  of  the  ways,  he  was  fully  conscious  of  it. 
Nevertheless,  he  passed  straight  from  it  to  another  perform 
ance  hardly  less  extraordinary.  From  his  table  drawer  he 
produced  a  little  memorandum  book,  and  in  it  —  just  below 
a  diagram  of  a  new  chest-developing  exercise  invented  last 
night  by  Klinker  —  he  jotted  down  the  things  that  Fifi  said 
a  man  must  do  to  be  like  other  men. 


QUEED  145 

A  clean  half-hour  remained  before  he  must  go  and  call 
on  the  young  lady  with  the  tom-boy  name,  Charles  Wey- 
land,  who  knew  "what  the  public  liked."  He  spent  it,  he, 
the  indefatigable  minute-shaver,  sitting  with  the  head  that 
no  longer  ached  clamped  in  his  hand.  It  had  been  the  most 
disturbing  day  of  his  life,  but  he  was  not  thinking  of  that 
exactly.  He  was  thinking  what  a  mistake  it  had  been  to 
leave  New  York.  There  he  had  had  but  two  friends  with 
no  possibility  of  getting  any  more.  Here  —  it  was  impossi 
ble  to  blink  the  fact  any  longer  —  he  already  had  two,  with 
at  least  two  more  determinedly  closing  in  on  him.  He  had 
Fifi  and  he  had  Buck  —  yes,  Buck;  the  young  lady  Charles 
Weyland  had  offered  him  her  friendship  this  very  day;  and 
unless  he  looked  alive  he  would  wake  up  some  morning  to 
find  that  Nicolovius  also  had  captured  him  as  a  friend. 

He  was  far  better  off  in  New  York,  where  days  would  go 
by  in  which  he  never  saw  Tim  or  Murphy  Queed.  And  yet 
.  .  .  did  he  want  to  go  back? 


XIII 

11  Taking  the  Little  Doctor  Down  a  Peg  or  Two11:  as  performed 
for  the  First  and  Only  Time  by  Sharlee  Weyland. 

THE  Star  that  fought  in  its  course  for  men  through 
Sharlee  Weyland  was  of  the  leal  and  resolute  kind. 
It  did  not  swerve  at  a  squall.  Sharlee  had  thought  the 
whole  thing  out,  and  made  up  her  mind.  Gentle  raillery, 
which  would  do  everything  necessary  in  most  cases,  would 
be  wholly  futile  here.  She  must  doff  all  gloves  and  give 
the  little  Doctor  the  dressing-down  of  his  life.  She  must 
explode  a  mine  under  that  enormously  exaggerated  self- 
esteem  which  swamped  the  young  man's  personality  like  a 
goitre.  Sharlee  did  not  want  to  do  this.  She  liked  Mr.  Queed, 
in  a  peculiar  sort  of  way,  and  yet  she  had  to  make  it  impos 
sible  for  him  ever  to  speak  to  her  again.  Her  nature  was  to 
give  pleasure,  and  therefore  she  was  going  to  do  her  utmost 
to  give  him  pain.  She  wanted  him  to  like  her,  and  conse 
quently  she  was  going  to  insult  him  past  forgiveness.  And 
she  was  not  even  sure  that  it  was  going  to  do  him  any  good. 
When  her  guest  walked  into  her  little  back  parlor  that 
evening,  Sharlee  was  feeling  very  self-sacrificing  and  noble. 
However,  she  merely  looked  uncommonly  pretty  and  tre 
mendously  engrossed  in  herself.  She  was  in  evening  dress.  It 
was  Easter  Monday,  and  at  nine,  as  it  chanced,  she  was  to  go 
out  under  the  escortage  of  Charles  Gardiner  West  to  some 
forgathering  of  youth  and  beauty.  But  her  costume  was 
so  perfectly  suited  to  the  little  curtain-raiser  called  Taking 
the  Little  Doctor  Down  a  Peg  or  Two,  that  it  might  have 
been  appointed  by  a  clever  stage-manager  with  that  alone 
in  mind.  She  was  the  haughty  beauty,  the  courted  princess, 
graciously  bestowing  a  few  minutes  from  her  crowding  fetes 


QUEED  147 

upon  some  fourth-rate  dependant.  And  indeed  the  little 
Doctor,  with  his  prematurely  old  face  and  his  shabby  clothes, 
rather  looked  the  part  of  the  dependant.  Sharlee's  greet 
ing  was  of  the  briefest. 

11  Ah,  Mr.  Queed.  ...  Sit  down." 

Her  negligent  nod  set  him  away  at  an  immense  distance ; 
even  he  was  aware  that  Charles  Weyland  had  undergone 
some  subtle  but  marked  change  since  the  morning.  The 
colored  maid  who  had  shown  him  in  was  retained  to  button 
her  mistress'  long  gloves.  It  proved  to  be  a  somewhat  slow 
process.  Over  the  mantel  hung  a  gilt-framed  mirror,  as 
wide  as  the  mantel  itself.  To  this  mirror,  the  gloves  but 
toned,  Miss  Weyland  passed,  and  reviewed  her  appearance 
with  slow  attention,  giving  a  pat  here,  making  a  minor 
readjustment  there.  But  this  survey  did  not  suffice  for 
details,  it  seemed ;  a  more  minute  examination  was  needed ; 
over  the  floor  she  trailed  with  leisurely  grace,  and  rang  the 
bell. 

"Oh,  Mary  —  my  vanity-box,  please.  On  the  dressing- 
table." 

Seating  herself  under  the  lamp,  she  produced  from  the 
contrivance  the  tiniest  little  mirror  ever  seen.  As  she 
raised  it  to  let  it  perform  its  dainty  function,  her  glance 
fell  on  Queed,  sitting  darkly  in  his  rocking-chair.  A  look  of 
mild  surprise  came  into  her  eye:  not  that  it  was  of  any  con 
sequence,  but  plainly  she  had  forgotten  that  he  was  there. 

"Oh  .  .  .  You  don't  mind  waiting  a  few  minutes?" 

"Idom— " 

"You  promised  half  an  hour  I  think?  Never  fear  that  1 
shall  take  longer  — " 

"  I  did  not  promise  half  an  hour  for  such  — " 

"It  was  left  to  me  to  decide  in  what  way  the  time  should 
be  employed,  1  believe.  What  I  have  to  say  can  be  said 
briefly,  but  to  you,  at  least,  it  should  prove  immensely 
interesting."  She  stifled  a  small  yawn  with  the  gloved  finger 
tips  of  her  left  hand.  "However,  of  course  don't  let  me  keep 
you  if  you  are  pressed  for  time." 


148  QUEED 

The  young  man  made  no  reply.  Sharlee  completed  at  her 
leisure  her  conference  with  the  vanity-box;  snapped  the 
trinket  shut;  and,  rising,  rang  the  bell  again.  This  time  she 
required  a  glass  of  water  for  her  good  comfort.  She  drank 
it  slowly,  watching  herself  in  the  mantel  mirror  as  she  did 
so,  and  setting  down  the  glass,  took  a  new  survey  of  her 
whole  effect,  this  time  in  a  long-distance  view. 

"Now,  Mr.  Queed!" 

She  sat  down  in  a  flowered  arm-chair  so  large  that  it 
engulfed  her,  and  fixed  him  with  a  studious,  puckering  gaze 
as  much  as  to  say :  "Let  *s  see.  Now,  what  was  his  trouble? " 

"Ah,  yes!  —  the  Post." 

She  glanced  at  the  little  clock  on  the  mantel,  appeared 
to  gather  in  her  thoughts  from  remote  and  brilliant  places, 
and  addressed  the  dingy  youth  briskly  but  not  unkindly. 

"Unfortunately,  I  have  an  engagement  this  evening  and 
can  give  you  very  little  time.  You  will  not  mind  if  I  am 
brief.  Here,  then,  is  the  case.  A  man  employed  in  a  minor 
position  on  a  newspaper  is  notified  that  he  is  to  be  discharged 
for  incompetence.  He  replies  that,  so  far  from  being  dis 
charged,  he  will  be  promoted  at  the  end  of  a  month,  and 
will  eventually  be  made  editor  of  the  paper.  Undoubtedly 
this  is  a  magnificent  boast,  but  to  make  it  good  means  a 
complete  transformation  in  the  character  of  this  man's  work 
—  namely,  from  entire  incompetence  to  competence  of  an 
unusual  sort,  all  within  a  month's  time.  You  are  the  man 
who  has  made  this  extraordinary  boast.  To  clear  the  ground 
before  I  begin  to  show  you  where  your  trouble  is,  please  tell 
me  how  you  propose  to  make  it  good." 

Not  every  man  feeling  inside  as  the  little  Doctor  felt  at 
that  moment  would  have  answered  with  such  admirable 
calm. 

"I  purpose,"  he  corrected  her,  "to  take  the  files  of  the 
Post  for  the  past  few  years  and  read  all  of  Colonel  Cowles's 
amusing  articles.  He,  I  am  informed,  is  the  editorial  mogul 
and  paragon.  I  purpose  to  study  those  articles  scientifically, 
to  analyze  them,  to  take  them  apart  and  see  exactly  how 


QUEED  149 

they  are  put  together.  I  purpose  to  destroy  my  own  style 
and  build  up  another  one  precisely  like  the  Colonel's  — 
if  anything,  a  shade  more  so.  In  short  I  purpose  to  learn  to 
write  like  an  ass,  of  asses,  for  asses." 

''That  is  your  whole  programme?" 

"It  is  more  than  enough,  I  think." 

"Ah?"  She  paused  a  moment,  looking  at  him  with  faint, 
distant  amusement.  "Now,  as  my  aunt's  business  woman, 
I,  of  course,  take  an  interest  in  the  finances  of  her  boarders. 
Therefore  I  had  better  begin  at  once  looking  about  for  a 
new  place  for  you  after  May  I5th.  What  other  kinds  of 
work  do  you  think  yourself  qualified  to  do,  besides  editorial 
writing  and  the  preparation  of  thesauruses?" 

He  looked  at  her  darkly.  "You  imagine  that  the  Post  will 
discharge  me  on  May  I5th?" 

"There  is  nothing  in  the  world  that  seems  to  me  so  cer 
tain." 

"And  why?" 

"Why  will  the  Post  discharge  you?  For  exactly  the  same 
reason  it  promises  to  discharge  you  now.  Incompetence." 

"You  agree  with  Colonel  Cowles,  then?  You  consider 
me  incompetent  to  write  editorials  for  the  Post?" 

"Oh,  totally.  And  it  goes  a  great  deal  deeper  than  style, 
I  assure  you.  Mr.  Queed,  you're  all  wrong  from  the  begin 
ning." 

Her  eyes  left  his  face;  went  first  to  the  clock;  glanced 
around  the  room.  Sharlee's  dress  was  blue,  and  her  neck 
was  as  white  as  a  wave's  foamy  tooth.  Her  manner  was 
intended  to  convey  to  Mr.  Queed  that  he  was  the  smallest 
midge  on  all  her  crowded  horizon.  It  did  not,  of  course, 
have  that  effect,  but  it  did  arrest  and  pique  his  attention 
most  successfully.  It  was  in  his  mind  that  Charles  Weyland 
had  been  of  some  assistance  to  him  in  first  suggesting  work 
on  the  Post ;  and  again  about  the  roses  for  Fifi.  He  was  still 
ready  to  believe  that  she  might  have  some  profitable  sug 
gestion  about  his  new  problem.  Was  she  not  that  "public" 
and  that  "average  reader"  which  he  himself  so  despised  and 


150  QUEED 

detested?  Yet  he  could  not  imagine  where  such  a  little  pink 
and  white  chit  found  the  hardihood  to  take  this  tone  with 
one  of  the  foremost  scientists  of  modern  times. 

"  You  interest  me.  I  am  totally  incompetent  now;  I  will 
be  totally  incompetent  on  May  I5th;  this  because  I  am  all 
wrong  from  the  beginning.  Pray  proceed." 

Sharlee,  her  thoughts  recalled,  made  a  slight  inclination 
of  her  head.  "Forgive  my  absent-mindedness.  First,  then, 
as  to  why  you  are  a  failure  as  an  editorial  writer.  You  are 
quite  mistaken  in  supposing  that  it  is  a  mere  question  of 
style,  though  right  in  regarding  your  style  as  in  itself  a 
fatal  handicap.  However,  the  trouble  has  its  root  in  your 
amusing  attitude  of  superiority  to  the  work.  You  think  of 
editorial  writing  as  small  hack-work,  entirely  beneath  the 
dignity  of  a  man  who  has  had  one  or  two  articles  accepted 
by  a  prehistoric  magazine  which  nobody  reads.  In  reality, 
it  is  one  of  the  greatest  and  most  splendid  of  all  professions, 
fit  to  call  out  the  very  best  of  a  really  big  man.  You  chuckle 
and  sneer  at  Colonel  Cowles  and  think  yourself  vastly  his 
superior  as  an  editorial  writer,  when,  in  the  opinion  of 
everybody  else,  he  is  in  every  way  your  superior.  I  doubt  if 
the  Post  has  a  single  reader  who  would  riot  prefer  to  read 
an  article  by  him,  on  any  subject,  to  reading  an  article  by 
you.  I  doubt  if  there  is  a  paper  in  the  world  that  would  not 
greatly  prefer  him  as  an  editor  to  you  — " 

"You  are  absurdly  mistaken,"  he  interrupted  coldly.  "I 
might  name  various  papers  — " 

"Yes,  the  Political  Science  Quarterly  and  the  Journal  of  the 
Anthropological  Institute."  Sharlee  smiled  tolerantly,  and 
immediately  resumed:  "When  you  sit  down  at  the  office  to 
write  an  article,  whom  do  you  think  you  are  writing  for? 
A  company  of  scientists?  An  institute  of  gray-bearded 
scholars?  An  academy  of  fossilized  old  doctors  of  laws? 
There  are  not  a  dozen  people  of  that  sort  who  read  the  Post. 
Has  it  never  occurred  to  you  to  call  up  before  your  mind's 
eye  the  people  you  actually  are  writing  for?  You  can  see 
them  any  day  as  you  walk  along  the  street.  Go  into  a  street 


QUEED  151 

car  at  six  o'clock  any  night  and  look  around  at  the  faces. 
There  is  your  public,  the  readers  of  the  Post  —  shop-clerks, 
stenographers,  factory-hands,  office-men,  plumbers,  team 
sters,  drummers,  milliners.  Look  at  them.  Have  you  any 
thing  to  say  to  interest  them?  Think.  If  they  were  to  file 
in  here  now  and  ask  you  to  make  a  few  remarks,  could  you, 
for  the  life  of  you,  say  one  single  thing  that  would  interest 
them?" 

"I  do  not  pretend,  or  aspire,"  said  Mr.  Queed,  "to  dis 
pense  frothy  nothings  tricked  out  to  beguile  the  tired  brick 
layer.  My  duty  is  to  give  forth  valuable  information  and 
ripened  judgment  couched  in  language  — " 

"No,  your  duty  is  to  get  yourself  read;  if  you  fail  there 
you  fail  everywhere.  Is  it  possible  that  you  don't  begin  to 
grasp  that  point  yet?  I  fancied  that  your  mind  was  quicker. 
You  appear  to  think  that  the  duty  of  a  newspaper  is  to  back 
people  up  against  a  wall  and  ram  helpful  statistics  into  them 
with  a  force-pump.  You  are  grotesquely  mistaken.  Your 
ideal  newspaper  would  not  keep  a  dozen  readers  in  this  city : 
that  is  to  say,  it  would  be  a  complete  failure  while  it  lasted 
and  would  bankrupt  Mr.  Morgan  in  six  months.  A  dead 
newspaper  is  a  useless  one,  the  world  over.  At  the  same  time, 
every  living  and  good  newspaper  is  a  little  better,  spreads 
a  little  more  sweetness  and  light,  gives  out  a  little  more 
valuable  information,  ripened  judgment,  et  cetera,  than  the 
vast  majority  of  its  readers  want  or  will  absorb.  The  Post 
is  that  sort  of  newspaper.  It  is  constantly  tugging  its  readers 
a  little  higher  than  they  —  I  mean  the  majority,  and  not 
the  cultured  few  —  are  willing  to  go.  But  the  Post  always 
recognizes  that  its  first  duty  is  to  get  itself  read :  if  it  does 
not  succeed  in  that,  it  lacks  the  principle  of  life  and  dies. 
Perhaps  the  tired  bricklayer  you  speak  of,  the  middle-class, 
commonplace,  average  people  who  make  up  nearly  all  of  the 
world,  ought  to  be  interested  in  John  Stuart  Mill's  attitude 
toward  the  single-tax.  But  the  fact  is  that  they  are  n't. 
The  Post  wisely  deals  with  the  condition,  and  not  a  theory: 
it  means  to  get  itself  read.  It  is  your  first  duty,  as  a  writer 


152  QUEED 

for  it,  to  get  yourself  read.  If  you  fail  to  get  yourself  read, 
you  are  worse  than  useless  to  the  Post.  Well,  you  have 
completely  failed  to  do  this,  and  that  is  why  the  Post  is  dis 
charging  you.  Come,  free  yourself  from  exaggerated  notions 
about  your  own  importance  and  look  at  this  simple  point 
with  the  calm  detachment  of  a  scientist.  The  Post  can  save 
money,  while  preserving  just  the  same  effect,  by  discharg 
ing  you  and  printing  every  morning  a  half-column  from  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica." 

She  rose  quickly,  as  though  her  time  was  very  precious, 
and  passed  over  to  the  table,  where  a  great  bowl  of  violets 
stood.  The  room  was  pretty:  it  had  reminded  Queed,  when 
he  entered  it,  of  Nicolovius's  room,  though  there  was  a 
softer  note  in  it,  as  the  flowers,  the  work-bag  on  the  table, 
the  balled-up  veil  and  gloves  on  the  mantel-shelf.  He  had 
liked,  too,  the  soft-shaded  lamps;  the  vague  resolve  had 
come  to  him  to  install  a  lamp  in  the  Scriptorium  later  on. 
But  now,  thinking  of  nothing1  like  this,  he  sat  in  a  thick 
silence  gazing  at  her  with  unwinking  sternness. 

Sharlee  carefully  gathered  the  violets  from  the  bowl, 
shook  a  small  shower  of  water  from  their  stems,  dried  them 
with  a  pocket  handkerchief  about  the  size  of  a  silver  dollar. 
Next  she  wrapped  the  stems  with  purple  tinfoil,  tied  them 
with  a  silken  cord  and  tassel  and  laid  the  gorgeous  bunch 
upon  a  magazine  back,  to  await  her  further  pleasure.  Then, 
coming  back,  she  resumed  her  seat  facing  the  shabby  young 
man  she  was  assisting  to  see  himself  as  others  saw  him. 

"I  might,"  she  said,  "simply  stop  there.  I  might  tell 
you  that  you  are  a  failure  as  an  editorial  writer  because  you 
have  nothing  at  all  to  say  that  is  of  the  smallest  interest  to 
the  great  majority  of  the  readers  of  editorials,  and  would 
not  know  how  to  say  it  if  you  had.  That  would  be  enough 
to  satisfy  most  men,  but  I  see  that  I  must  make  things  very 
plain  and  definite  for  you.  Mr.  Queed,  you  are  a  failure  as 
an  editorial  writer  because  you  are  first  a  failure  in  a  much 
more  important  direction.  You  're  a  failure  as  a  human  being 
—  as  a  man.' 


QUEED  153 

She  was  watching  his  face  lightly,  but  closely,  and  so  she 
was  on  her  feet  as  soon  as  he,  and  had  her  hand  out  before 
he  had  even  thought  of  making  this  gesture. 

"It  is  useless  for  this  harangue  to  continue,"  he  said, 
with  a  brow  of  storm.  "Your  conception  of  helpful  ad 
vice  .  .  ," 

But  Sharlee's  voice,  which  had  begun  as  soon  as  his, 
drowned  him  out.  .  .  .  "  Complimented  you  a  little  too  far, 
I  see.  I  shall  be  sure  to  remember  after  this,"  she  said  with 
such  a  sweet  smile,  "that,  after  all  your  talk,  you  are  just  the 
average  man,  and  want  to  hear  only  what  flatters  your  little 
vanity.  Good-night.  So  nice  to  have  seen  you." 

She  nodded  brightly,  with  faint  amusement,  and  turning 
away,  moved  off  toward  the  door  at  the  back.  Queed,  of 
course,  had  no  means  of  knowing  that  she  was  thinking,  al 
most  jubilantly :  "  I  knew  that  mouth  meant  spirit ! "  He  only 
knew  that,  whereas  he  had  meant  to  terminate  the  inter 
view  with  a  grave  yet  stinging  rebuke  to  her,  she  had  given 
the  effect  of  terminating  the  interview  with  a  graceful  yet 
stinging  rebuke  to  him.  This  was  not  what  he  wanted  in 
the  least.  Come  to  think  of  it,  he  doubted  if  he  wanted  the 
interview  to  end  at  all. 

"MissWeyland  .  .  ." 

She  turned  on  the  threshhold  of  the  farther  door.  "  I  beg 
your  pardon!  I  thought  you'd  gone!  Your  hat?  —  I  think 
you  left  it  in  the  hall,  did  n't  you?" 

"It  is  not  my  hat." 

"Oh  — what  is  it?" 

"God  knows,"  said  the  little  Doctor,  hoarsely. 

He  was  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  floor,  his  hands 
jammed  into  his  trousers  pockets,  his  hair  tousled  over  a 
troubled  brow,  his  breast  torn  by  emotions  which  were 
entirely  new  in  his  experience  and  which  he  did  n't  even 
know  the  names  of.  All  the  accumulation  of  his  disruptive 
day  was  upon  him.  He  felt  both  terrifically  upset  inside,  and 
interested  to  the  degree  of  physical  pain  in  something  or 
other,  he  had  no  idea  what.  Presently  he  started  walking 


154  QUEED 

up  and  down  the  room,  nervous  as  a  caged  lion,  eyes  fixed 
on  space  or  on  something  within,  while  Sharlee  stood  in  the 
doorway  watching  him  casually  and  unsurprised,  as  though 
just  this  sort  of  thing  took  place  in  her  little  parlor  regularly , 
seven  nights  a  week. 

"Go  ahead!  Go  ahead!"  he  broke  out  abruptly,  coming 
to  a  halt.  "Pitch  into  me.  Do  it  for  all  you're  worth.  I 
suppose  you  think  it's  what  I  need." 

"Certainly,"  said  Sharlee,  pleasantly. 

She  stood  beside  her  chair  again,  flushed  with  a  secret 
sense  of  victory,  liking  him  more  for  his  temper  and  his  con 
trol  than  she  ever  could  have  liked  him  for  his  learning.  But 
it  was  not  her  idea  that  the  little  Doctor  had  got  it  any 
where  near  hard  enough  as  yet. 

"Won't  you  sit  down,  Mr.  Queed?" 

It  appeared  that  Mr.  Queed  would. 

"I  am  paying  you  the  extraordinary  compliment,"  said 
Sharlee,  "of  talking  to  you  as  others  might  talk  about  you 
behind  your  back  —  in  fact,  as  everybody  does  talk  about 
you  behind  your  back.  I  do  this  on  the  theory  that  you  are 
a  serious  and  honest- minded  man,  sincerely  interested  in 
learning  the  truth  about  yourself  and  your  failures,  so  that 
you  may  correct  them.  If  you  are  interested  only  in  having 
your  vanity  fed  by  flattering  fictions,  please  say  so  right  now. 
I  have  no  time,"  she  said,  hardly  able  for  her  life  to  suppress 
a  smile,  "for  butterflies  and  triflers." 

Butterflies  and  triflers!  Mr.  Queed,  proprietor  of  the 
famous  Schedule,  a  butterfly  and  a  trifler! 

He  said  in  a  muffled  voice:  "Proceed." 

"Since  an  editorial  writer,"  said  Sharlee,  seating  herself 
and  beginning  with  a  paragraph  as  neat  as  a  public  speaker's, 
"must  be  able,  as  his  first  qualification,  to  interest  the  com 
mon  people,  it  is  manifest  that  he  must  be  interested  in 
the  common  people.  He  must  feel  his  bond  of  humanity 
with  them,  sympathize  with  them,  like  them,  love  them. 
This  is  the  great  secret  of  Colonel  Cowles's  success  as  an 
editor.  A  fine  gentleman  by  birth,  breeding,  and  tradition, 


QUEED  155 

he  is  yet  always  a  human  being  among  human  beings.  All 
his  life  he  has  been  doing  things  with  and  for  the  people. 
He  went  all  through  the  war,  and  you  might  have  thought 
the  whole  world  depended  on  him,  the  way  he  went  up 
Cemetery  Ridge  on  the  3rd  of  July,  1863.  He  was  shot  all 
to  pieces,  but  they  patched  him  together,  and  the  next  year 
there  he  was  back  in  the  fighting  around  Petersburg.  After 
the  war  he  was  a  leader  against  the  carpet-baggers,  and  if 
this  State  is  peaceful  and  prosperous  and  comfortable  for 
you  to  live  in  now,  it  is  because  of  what  men  like  him  and  my 
father  did  a  generation  ago.  When  he  took  the  Post  he 
went  on  just  the  same,  working  and  thinking  and  fighting 
for  men  and  with  men,  and  all  in  the  service  of  the  people. 
I  suppose,  of  course,  his  views  through  all  these  years  have 
not  always  been  sound,  but  they  have  always  been  honest 
and  honorable,  sensible,  manly,  and  sweet.  And  they  have 
always  had  a  practical  relation  with  the  life  of  the  people. 
The  result  is  that  he  has  thousands  and  thousands  of  readers 
who  feel  that  their  day  has  been  wanting  in  something 
unless  they  have  read  what  he  has  to  say.  There  is  Colonel 
Cowles —  Does  this  interest  you,  Mr.  Queed?  If  not,  I 
need  not  weary  us  both  by  continuing." 

He  again  requested  her,  in  the  briefest  possible  way,  to 
proceed. 

"Well!  There  is  Colonel  Cowles,  whom  you  presume  to 
despise,  because  you  know,  or  think  you  know,  more 
political  and  social  science  than  he  does.  Where  you  got 
your  preposterously  exaggerated  idea  of  the  value  of  text 
book  science  I  am  at  a  loss  to  understand.  The  people  you 
aspire  to  lead  —  for  that  is  what  an  editorial  writer  must  do 
—  care  nothing  for  it.  That  tired  bricklayer  whom  you 
dismiss  with  such  contempt  of  course  cares  nothing  for  it. 
But  that  bricklayer  is  the  People,  Mr.  Queed.  He  is  the 
very  man  that  Colonel  Cowles  goes  to,  and  puts  his  hand 
on  his  shoulder,  and  tries  to  help  —  help  him  to  a  better 
home,  better  education  for  his  children,  more  and  more 
wholesome  pleasures,  a  higher  and  happier  living.  Colonel 


156  QUEED 

Cowles  thinks  of  life  as  an  opportunity  to  live  with  and 
serve  the  common,  average,  everyday  people.  You  think 
of  it  as  an  opportunity  to  live  by  yourself  and  serve  your 
own  ambition.  He  writes  to  the  hearts  of  the  people.  You 
write  to  the  heads  of  scientists.  Doubtless  it  will  amaze  you 
to  be  told  that  his  paragraph  on  the  death  of  Moses  Page, 
the  Byrds'  old  negro  butler,  was  a  far  more  useful  article 
in  every  way  than  your  long  critique  on  the  currency  system 
of  Germany  which  appeared  in  the  same  issue.  Colonel 
Cowles  is  a  big-hearted  human  being.  You  —  you  are  a 
scientific  formula.  And  the  worst  of  it  is  that  you  're  proud 
of  it  I  The  hopeless  part  of  it  is  that  you  actually  consider 
a  few  old  fossils  as  bigger  than  the  live  people  all  around 
you !  How  can  I  show  you  your  terrible  mistake?  .  ,  .  Why, 
Mr.  Queed,  the  life  and  example  of  a  little  girl  .  .  ."  she 
stopped,  rather  precipitately,  stared  hard  at  her  hands, 
which  were  folded  in  her  lap,  and  went  resolutely  on :  "  The 
life  and  example  of  a  little  girl  like  Fifi  are  worth  more  than 
all  the  text-books  you  will  ever  write." 

A  silence  fell.  In  the  soft  lamplight  of  the  pretty  room, 
Queed  sat  still  and  silent  as  a  marble  man;  and  presently 
Sharlee,  plucking  herself  together,  resumed :  — 

"  Perhaps  you  now  begin  to  glimpse  a  wider  difference 
between  yourself  and  Colonel  Cowles  than  mere  unlikeness 
of  literary  style.  If  you  continue  to  think  this  difference 
all  in  your  own  favor,  I  urge  you  to  abandon  any  idea  of 
writing  editorials  for  the  Post.  If  on  the  other  hand,  you 
seriously  wish  to  make  good  your  boast  of  this  morning,  I 
urge  you  to  cease  sneering  at  men  like  Colonel  Cowles,  and 
humbly  begin  to  try  to  imitate  them.  I  say  that  you  are  a 
failure  as  an  editorial  writer  because  you  are  a  failure  as  a 
man,  and  I  say  that  you  are  a  failure  as  a  man  because  you 
have  no  relation  at  all  with  man's  life.  You  aspire  to  teach 
and  lead  human  beings,  and  you  have  not  the  least  idea 
what  a  human  being  is,  and  not  the  slightest  wish  to  find 
out.  All  around  you  are  men,  live  men  of  flesh  and  blood, 
who  are  moving  the  world,  and  you,  whipping  out  your 


QUEED  157 

infinitesimal  measuring- rod,  dismiss  them  as  inferior  cattle 
who  know  nothing  of  text-book  science.  Here  is  a  real  and 
living  world,  and  you  roll  through  it  like  a  billiard-ball. 
And  all  because  you  make  the  fatal  error  of  mistaking  a 
sorry  handful  of  mummies  for  the  universe." 

"It  is  a  curious  coincidence,"  said  Queed,  with  great  but 
deceptive  mildness,  "that  Fifi  said  much  the  same  thing 
to  me,  though  in  quite  a  different  way,  this  afternoon." 

"She  told  me.  But  Fifi  was  not  the  first.  You  had  the 
same  advice  from  your  father  two  months  ago." 

" My  father?" 

"You  have  not  forgotten  his  letter  that  you  showed  me 
in  your  office  one  afternoon?" 

It  seemed  that  he  had ;  but  he  had  it  in  his  pocket,  as  it 
chanced,  and  dug  it  out,  soiled  and  frayed  from  long  confine 
ment.  Stooping  forward  to  introduce  it  into  the  penumbra 
of  lamplight,  he  read  over  the  detective-story  message: 
"Make  friends:  mingle  with  people  and  learn  to  like  them* 
This  is  the  earnest  injunction  of  Your  father ." 

"You  complain  of  your  father's  treatment  of  you,"  said 
Sharlee,  "but  he  offered  you  a  liberal  education  there,  and 
you  declined  to  take  it." 

She  glanced  at  the  clock,  turned  about  to  the  table  and 
picked  up  her  beautiful  bouquet.  A  pair  of  long  bodkins 
with  lavender  glass  heads  were  waiting,  it  appeared;  she  pro 
ceeded  to  pin  on  her  flowers,  adjusting  them  with  careful 
attention;  and  rising,  again  reviewed  herself  in  the  mantel- 
mirror.  Then  she  sat  down  once  more,  and  calmly  said : 

"As  you  are  a  failure  as  an  editorial  writer  and  as  a  man, 
so  you  are  a  failure  as  a  sociologist.  ..." 

It  was  the  last  straw,  the  crowning  blasphemy.  She 
hardly  expected  him  to  endure  it,  and  he  did  not;  she  was 
glad  to  have  it  so.  But  the  extreme  mildness  with  which 
he  interrupted  her  almost  unnerved  her,  so  confidently  had 
she  braced  herself  for  violence. 

"Do  you  mind  if  we  omit  that?  I  think  I  have  heard 
enough  about  my  failures  for  one  night." 


158  QUEED 

He  had  risen,  but  stood,  for  a  wonder,  irresolute.  It  was 
too  evident  that  he  did  not  know  what  to  do  next.  Presently, 
having  nowhere  else  to  go,  he  walked  over  to  the  mantel 
shelf  and  leant  his  elbow  upon  it,  staring  down  at  the  floor. 
A  considerable  interval  passed,  broken  only  by  the  ticking  of 
the  clock  before  he  said: — 

"You  may  be  an  authority  on  editorial  writing  —  even 
on  manhood  —  life.  But  I  can  hardly  recognize  you  in  that 
capacity  as  regards  sociology." 

Sharlee  made  no  reply.  She  had  no  idea  that  the  young 
man's  dismissal  from  the  Post  had  been  a  crucifixion  to  him, 
an  unendurable  infamy  upon  his  virginal  pride  of  intellect. 
She  had  no  conception  of  his  powers  of  self-control,  which 
happened  to  be  far  greater  than  her  own,  and  she  would 
have  given  worlds  to  know  what  he  was  thinking  at  that 
moment.  For  her  part  she  was  thinking  of  him,  intensely, 
and  in  a  personal  way.  Manners  he  had  none,  but  where  did 
he  get  his  manner?  Who  had  taught  him  to  bow  in  that 
way?  He  had  mentioned  insults:  where  had  he  heard  of 
insults,  this  stray  who  had  raised  himself  in  the  house  of 
a  drunken  policeman? 

"Well,"  said  Queed,  with  the  utmost  calmness,  "you 
might  tell  me,  in  a  word,  why  you  think  I  am  a  failure  as  a 
sociologist." 

"You  are  a  failure  as  a  sociologist,"  said  Sharlee,  immedi 
ately,  "for  the  same  reason  as  both  your  other  failures:  you 
are  wholly  out  of  relation  with  real  life.  Sociology  is  the 
science  of  human  society.  You  know  absolutely  nothing 
about  human  society,  except  what  other  men  have  found 
out  and  written  down  in  text-books.  You  say  that  you  are 
an  evolutionary  sociologist.  Yet  a  wonderful  demonstra 
tion  in  social  evolution  is  going  on  all  around  you,  and  you 
don't  even  know  it.  You  are  standing  here  directly  between 
two  civilizations.  On  the  one  side  there  are  Colonel  Cowles 
and  my  old  grandmother  —  mother  of  your  landlady, 
plucky  dear!  On  the  other  there  are  our  splendid  young 
men,  men  who,  with  traditions  of  leisure  and  cultured  idle- 


QUEED  159 

ness  in  their  blood,  have  pitched  in  with  their  hands  and 
heads  to  make  this  State  hum,  and  will  soon  be  meeting  and 
beating  your  Northern  young  men  at  every  turn.  On  one 
side  there  is  the  old  slaveholding  aristocracy;  on  the  other 
the  finest  Democracy  in  the  world ;  and  here  and  now  human 
society  is  evolving  from  one  thing  to  the  other.  A  real  sociol 
ogist  would  be  absorbed  in  watching  this  marvelous  pro 
cess:  social  evolution  actually  surprised  in  her  workshop. 
But  you  —  I  doubt  if  you  even  knew  it  was  going  on.  A 
tremendous  social  drama  is  being  acted  out  under  your 
very  window  and  you  yawn  and  pull  down  the  blind." 

There  was  a  brief  silence.  In  the  course  of  it  the  door 
bell  was  heard  to  ring ;  soon  the  door  opened ;  a  masculine 
murmur ;  then  the  maid  Mary's  voice,  clearly : "  Yassuh,  she 's 
in.  ...  Won't  you  rest  your  coat,  Mr.  West?" 

Mary  entered  the  little  back  parlor,  a  card  upon  a  tray. 
"Please  draw  the  folding  doors,"  said  Sharlee.  "Say  that 
I  '11  be  in  in  a  few  minutes." 

They  were  alone  once  more,  she  and  the  little  Doctor; 
the  silence  enfolded  them  again ;  and  she  broke  it  by  saying 
the  last  word  she  had  to  say. 

"I  have  gone  into  detail  because  I  wanted  to  make  the 
unfavorable  impression  you  produce  upon  your  little  world 
clear  to  you,  for  once.  But  I  can  sum  up  all  that  I  have  said 
in  less  than  six  words.  If  you  remember  anything  at  all  that 
I  have  said,  I  wish  you  would  remember  this.  Mr.  Queed, 
you  are  afflicted  with  a  fatal  malady.  Your  cosmos  is  all 
Ego." 

She  started  to  rise,  thought  better  of  it,  and  sat  still  in  her 
flowered  chair  full  in  the  lamplight.  The  little  Doctor  stood 
at  the  mantel-shelf,  his  elbow  upon  it,  and  the  silence 
lengthened.  To  do  something,  Sharlee  pulled  off  her  right 
long  glove  and  slowly  put  it  back  again.  Then  she  pulled 
off  her  left  long  glove,  and  about  the  time  she  was  buttoning 
the  last  button  he  began  speaking,  in  a  curious,  lifeless 
voice. 

"  I  learned  to  read  when  I  was  four  years  old  out  of  a  copy 


1 6o  QUEED 

of  the  New  York  Evening  Post.  It  came  to  the  house,  I 
remember,  distinctly,  wrapped  around  two  pork  chops. 
That  seemed  to  be  all  the  reading  matter  we  had  in  the 
house  for  a  long  time  —  I  believe  Tim  was  in  hard  luck  in 
those  days  —  and  by  the  time  I  was  six  I  had  read  that 
paper  all  through  from  beginning  to  end,  five  times.  I  have 
wondered  since  if  that  incident  did  not  give  a  bent  to  my 
whole  mind.  If  you  are  familiar  with  the  Evening  Post,  you 
may  appreciate  what  I  mean.  ...  It  came  out  in  me  ex 
actly  like  a  duck's  yearning  for  water;  that  deep  instinct 
for  the  printed  word.  Of  course  Tim  saw  that  I  was  different 
from  him.  He  helped  me  a  little  in  the  early  stages,  and 
then  he  stood  back,  awed  by  my  learning,  and  let  me  go 
my  own  gait.  When  I  was  about  eight,  I  learned  of  the 
existence  of  public  libraries.  I  daresay  it  would  surprise 
you  to  know  the  books  I  was  reading  in  this  period  of  my 
life  —  and  writing  too :  for  in  my  eleventh  year  I  was  the 
author  of  a  one- volume  history  of  the  world,  besides  several 
treatises.  And  I  early  began  to  think,  too.  What  was  the 
fundamental  principle  underlying  the  evolution  of  a  higher 
and  higher  human  type?  How  could  this  principle  be  uni 
fied  through  all  branches  of  science  and  reduced  to  an  oper 
able  law?  Questions  such  as  these  kept  me  awake  at  night 
while  I  still  wore  short  trousers.  At  fourteen  I  was  boarding 
alone  in  a  kind  of  tenement  on  the  East  Side.  Of  course  I 
was  quite  different  from  all  the  people  around  me.  Different. 
I  don't  remember  that  they  showed  any  affectionate  inter 
est  in  me,  and  why  on  earth  should  they?  As  I  say,  I  was 
different.  There  was  nothing  there  to  suggest  a  conception 
of  that  brotherhood  of  man  you  speak  of.  I  was  born  with 
this  impulse  for  isolation  and  work,  and  everything  that 
happened  to  me  only  emphasized  it.  I  never  had  a  day's 
schooling  in  my  life,  and  never  a  word  of  advice  or  admoni 
tion  —  never  a  scolding  in  all  my  life  till  now.  Here  is  a 
point  on  which  your  Christian  theory  of  living  seems  to  me 
entirely  too  vague:  how  to  reconcile  individual  responsibility 
with  the  forces  of  heredity  and  circumstance.  From  my  point 


QUEED  161 

of  view  your  talk  would  have  been  better  rounded  if  you 
had  touched  on  that.  Still,  it  was  striking  and  interesting  as 
it  was.  I  like  to  hear  a  clear  statement  of  a  point  of  view,  and 
that  your  statement  happens  to  riddle  me,  personally,  of 
course  does  not  affect  the  question  in  any  way.  If  I  regard 
human  society  and  human  life  too  much  as  the  biologist  re 
gards  his  rabbit,  which  appears  to  be  the  gist  of  your  criti 
cism,  I  can  at  least  cheerfully  take  my  own  turn  on  the  ope 
rating  table  as  occasion  requires.    There  is,  of  course,  a  great 
deal  that  I  might  say  in  reply,  but  I  do  not  understand  that 
either  of  us  desires  a  debate.   I  will  simply  assert  that  your 
fundamental  conception  of  life,  while  novel  and  piquant, 
will  not  hold  water  for  a  moment.   Your  conception  is,  if  I 
state  it  fairly,  that  a  man's  life,  to  be  useful,  to  be  a  life  of 
service,  must  be  given  immediately  to  his  fellows.   He  must 
do  visible  and  tangible  things  with  other  men.  I  think  a  little 
reflection  will  convince  you  that,  on  the  contrary,  much  or 
most  of  the  best  work  of  the  world  has  been  done  by  men 
whose  personal  lives  were  not  unlike  my  own.   There  was 
Palissy,  to  take  a  familiar  minor  instance.    Of  course  his 
neighbors  saw  in  him  only  a  madman  whose  cosmos  was  all 
Ego.  Yet  people  are  grateful  to  Palissy  to-day,  and  think 
little  of  the  suffering  of  his  wife  and  children.  Newton  was  no 
genial  leader  of  the  people.   Bacon  could  not  even  be  loyal 
to  his  friends.  The  living  world  around  Socrates  put  him  to 
death.  The  world's  great  wise  men,  inventors,  scientists,  phil 
osophers,  prophets,  have  not  usually  spent  their  days  rubbing 
elbows  with  the  bricklayer.    Yet  these  men  have  served 
their  race  better  than  all  the  good-fellows  that  ever  lived. 
To  each  his  gifts.    If  I  succeed  in  reducing  the  principle  of 
human  evolution  to  its  eternal  law,  I  need  not  fear  the  judg 
ment  of  posterity  upon  my  life.    I  shall,  in  fact,  have  per 
formed  the  highest  service  to  humankind  that  a  finite  mind 
can  hope  to  compass.  Nevertheless,  I  am  impressed  by  much 
that  you  say.    I  daresay  a  good  deal  of  it  is  valuable.   All 
of  it  I  engage  to  analyze  and  consider  dispassionately  at  my 
leisure.    Meantime,  I  thank  you  for  your  interest  in  the 
matter.  Good-evening." 


1 62  QUEED 

"Mr.  Queed." 

Sharlee  rose  hurriedly,  since  hurry  was  so  evidently 
necessary.  She  felt  profoundly  stirred,  she  hardly  knew 
why;  all  her  airs  of  a  haughty  princess  were  fled;  and  she 
intercepted  him  with  no  remnant  of  her  pretense  that  she 
was  putting  a  shabby  inferior  in  his  place. 

"I  want  to  tell  you,"  she  said,  somewhat  nervously, 
"that  I  —  I  —  admire  very  much  the  way  you've  taken 
this.  No  ordinary  man  would  have  listened  with  such  — " 

"I  never  pretended  to  be  an  ordinary  man." 

He  moved,  but  she  stood  unmoving  in  front  of  him,  the 
pretty  portrait  of  a  lady  in  blue,  and  the  eyes  that  she  fas 
tened  upon  him  reminded  him  vaguely  of  Fin's. 

"Perhaps  I — should  tell  you,"  said  Sharlee,  "just  why 
j >> 

"Now  don't,"  he  said,  smiling  faintly  at  her  with  his  old 
air  of  a  grandfather  —  "don't  spoil  it  all  by  saying  that  you 
did  n't  mean  it." 

Under  his  smile  she  colored  a  little,  and,  despite  herself, 
looked  confused.  He  took  advantage  of  her  embarrassment 
to  pass  her  with  another  bow  and  go  out,  leaving  her 
struggling  desperately  with  the  feeling  that  he  had  got  the 
best  of  her  after  all. 

But  the  door  opened  again  a  little  way,  almost  at  once, 
and  the  trim-cut,  academic  face,  with  the  lamplight  falling 
upon  the  round  glasses  and  blotting  them  out  in  a  yellow 
smudge,  appeared  in  the  crevice. 

"By  the  way,  you  were  wrong  in  saying  that  I  pulled 
clown  my  blind  on  the  evolutionary  process  now  going  on 
in  the  South.  I  give  four  thousand  words  to  it  in  my  His 
torical  Perspective,  volume  one." 


XIV 

In  which  Klinker  quotes  Scripture,  and  Queed  has  helped  Fifi 
with  her  Lessons  for  the  Last  Time. 

THE  tax-articles  in  the  Post  had  ceased  after  the 
adjournment  of  the  Legislature,  which  body  gave  no 
signs  of  ever  having  heard  of  them.    Mr.  Queed's 
new  series  dealt  authoritatively  with  ''Currency  Systems 
of  the  World."    He  polished  the  systems  off  at  the  rate  of 
three  a  week.    But  he  had  asked  and  obtained  permission 
to  submit,  also,  voluntary  contributions  on  topics  of  his 
own  choosing,  and  now  for  a  fortnight  these  offerings  had 
died  daily  in  Colonel  Cowles's  waste-basket. 

As  for  his  book,  Queed  could  not  bear  to  think  of  it  in 
these  days.  Deliberately  he  had  put  a  winding-sheet  about 
his  heart's  desire,  and  laid  it  away  in  a  drawer,  until  such 
time  as  he  had  indisputably  qualified  himself  to  be  editor  of 
the  Post.  Having  qualified,  he  could  open  that  drawer  again, 
with  a  rushing  access  of  stifled  ardor,  and  await  the  Colonel's 
demise;  but  to  do  this,  he  figured  now,  would  take  him  not 
less  than  two  months  and  a  half.  Two  months  and  a  half 
wrenched  from  the  Schedule !  That  sacred  bill  of  rights  not 
merely  corrupted,  but  for  a  space  nullified  and  cancelled! 
Yes,  it  was  the  ultimate  sacrifice  that  outraged  pride  of 
intellect  had  demanded;  but  the  young  man  would  not 
flinch.  And  there  were  moments  when  Trainer  Klinker  was 
startled  by  the  close-shut  misery  of  his  face. 

The  Scriptorium  had  been  degraded  into  a  sickening 
school  of  journalism.  Day  after  day,  night  after  night, 
Queed  sat  at  his  tiny  table  poring  over  back  files  of  the  Post, 
examining  Colonel  Cowles's  editorials  as  a  geologist  ex 
amines  a  Silurian  deposit.  He  analyzed,  classified,  tabu- 


164  QUEED 

lated,  computed  averages,  worked  out  underlying  laws;  and 
gradually,  with  great  travail  —  for  the  journalese  language 
was  to  him  as  Greek  to  another  —  he  deduced  from  a  thou 
sand  editorials  a  few  broad  principles,  somewhat  as  fol 
lows: — 

1.  That  the  Colonel  dealt  with  a  very  wide  range  of 
concrete  topics,  including  many  that  appeared  extremely 
trivial.    (Whereas  he,  Queed,  had  dealt  almost  exclusively 
with  abstract  principles,  rarely  taking  cognizance  of  any 
event  that  had  happened  later  than  1850.) 

2.  That  nearly  all  the  Colonel's  "best"  articles  —  i.  e.t 
best-liked,  most  popular:  the  kind  that  Major  Brooke  and 
Mr.  Bylash,  or  even  Miss  Miller,  were  apt  to  talk  about  at 
the  supper-table  —  dealt  with  topics  of  a  purely  local  and 
ephemeral  interest. 

3.  That  the  Colonel  never  went  deeply  or  exhaustively 
into  any  group  of  facts,  but  that,  taking  one  broad  simple 
hypothesis  as  his  text,  he  hammered  that  over  and  over, 
saying  the  same  thing  again  and  again  in  different  ways, 
but  always  with  a  wealth  of    imagery  and    picturesque 
phrasing. 

4.  That  the  Colonel  invariably  got  his  humorous  effects 
by  a  good-natured  but  sometimes  sharp  ridicule,  the  process 
of  which  was  to  exaggerate  the  argument  or  travesty  the 
cause  he  was  attacking  until  it  became  absurd. 

5.  That  the  Colonel,  no  matter  what  his  theme,  always 
wrote  with  vigor  and  heat  and  color :  so  that  even  if  he  were 
dealing  with  something  on  the  other  side  of  the  world,  you 
might  suppose  that  he,  personally,  was  intensely  gratified 
or  extremely  indignant  about  it,  as  the  case  might  be. 

These  principles  Queed  was  endeavoring,  with  his  pecu 
liar  faculty  for  patient  effort,  to  apply  practically  in  his 
daily  offerings.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  he  found  the  task 
harder  than  Klinker's  Exercises,  and  that  the  little  article 
on  the  city's  method  of  removing  garbage,  which  failed  to 
appear  in  this  morning's  Post,  had  stood  him  seven  hours  of 
time. 


QUEED  165 

It  was  a  warm  rainy  night  in  early  May.  Careful  listening 
disclosed  the  fact  that  Buck,  Klinker,  who  had  as  usual 
walked  up  from  the  gymnasium  with  Queed,  was  changing 
his  shoes  in  the  next  room,  preparatory  for  supper.  Other 
wise  the  house  was  very  still.  Fifi  had  been  steadily  re 
ported  "not  so  well"  for  a  long  time  and,  for  two  days,  very 
ill.  Queed  sitting  before  the  table,  his  gas  ablaze  and  his 
shade  up,  tilted  back  his  chair  and  thought  of  her  now. 
All  at  once,  with  no  conscious  volition  on  his  part,  he  found 
himself  saying  over  the  startling  little  credo  that  Fifi  had 
suggested  for  his  taking,  on  the  day  he  sent  her  the  roses. 

To  like  men  and  do  the  things  that  men  do.  To  smoke.  To 
laugh.  To  joke  and  tell  funny  stories.  To  take  a  .  .  . 

The  door  of  the  Scriptorium-editorium  opened  and  Buck 
Klinker,  entering  without  formalities,  threw  himself, 
according  to  his  habit,  upon  the  tiny  bed.  This  time  he  came 
by  invitation,  to  complete  the  decidedly  interesting  con 
versation  upon  which  the  two  men  had  walked  up  town; 
but  talk  did  not  at  once  begin.  A  book  rowelled  the  small 
of  Klinker's  back  as  he  reclined  upon  the  pillow,  and  pluck 
ing  it  from  beneath  him,  he  glanced  at  the  back  of  it. 
,  "Vanity  Fair.  Did  n't  know  you  ever  read  story-books, 
Doc." 

The  Doc  did  not  answer.  He  was  occupied  with  the 
thought  that  not  one  of  the  things  that  Fifi  had  urged  upon 
him  did  he  at  present  do.  Smoking  he  could  of  course  take 
up  at  any  time.  Buck  Klinker  worked  in  a  tobacconist's 
shop ;  it  might  be  a  good  idea  to  consult  him  as  to  what  was 
the  best  way  to  begin.  As  for  telling  funny  stories  —  did  he 
for  the  life  of  him  know  one  to  tell?  He  racked  his  brain 
in  vain.  There  were  two  books  that  he  remembered  having 
seen  in  the  As  tor  Library,  The  Percy  Anecdotes,  and  Mark 
Lemon's  Jest  Book;  perhaps  the  State  Library  had  them. 
.  .  .  Stay!  Did  not  Willoughby  himself  somewhere  intro 
duce  an  anecdote  of  a  distinctly  humorous  nature? 

"It  ain't  much,"  said  Buck,  dropping  Thackeray  to  the 
floor.  "I  read  the  whole  thing  once.  —  No,  I  guess  I'm 


166  QUEED 

thinkin'  of  The  County  Fair,  a  drammer  that  I  saw  at  the 
Bee-jou.  But  I  guess  they're  all  the  same,  those  Fairs. 

"Say  Doc,"  he  went  on  presently,  "I'm  going  to  double 
you  on  Number  Seven,  beginning  from  to-morrow,  hear?" 

Number  Seven  was  one  of  the  stiffest  of  Klinker's  Exer 
cises  for  All  Parts  of  the  Body.  Queed  looked  up  absently. 

"That's  right,"  said  his  trainer,  inexorably.  "It's  just 
what  you  need.  I  had  a  long  talk  with  Smithy,  last  night." 

"Buck,"  said  the  Doctor,  clearing  his  throat,  "have  I 
ever  —  ahem  —  told  you  of  the  famous  reply  of  Dr.  John 
son  to  the  Billingsgate  fishwives?" 

"Johnson?  Who?  Fat,  sandy-haired  man  lives  on  Third 
Street?" 

"No,  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,  the  well-known  English  author 
and  —  character.  It  is  related  that  on  one  occasion  Dr. 
Johnson  approached  the  fishwives  at  Billingsgate  to  pur 
chase  of  their  wares.  The  exact  details  of  the  story  are  not 
altogether  clear  in  my  memory,  but,  as  I  recall  it,  something 
the  good  Doctor  said  angered  these  women,  for  they  began 
showering  him  with  profane  and  blasphemous  names.  At 
this  style  of  language  the  fishwives  are  said  to  be  extremely 
proficient.  What  do  you  fancy  that  Dr.  Johnson  called 
them  in  return?  But  you  could  hardly  guess.  He  called 
them  parallelopipedons.  I  am  not  entirely  certain  whether 
it  was  parallelopipedons  or  isosceles  triangles.  Possibly  there 
are  two  versions  of  the  story." 

Buck  stared  at  him,  frankly  and  greatly  bewildered,  and 
noticed  that  the  little  Doctor  was  staring  at  him,  with  strong 
marks  of  anxiety  on  his  face. 

"I  should  perhaps  say,"  added  Queed,  "that  parallelo 
pipedons  and  isosceles  triangles  are  not  profane  or  swearing 
words  at  all.  They  are,  in  fact,  merely  the  designations 
applied  to  geometrical  figures." 

"Oh,"saidKlinker.    "Oh." 

There  was  a  brief  pause. 

"Ah,  well!  ...  Go  on  with  what  you  were  telling  me  as 
we  walked  up,  then!" 


QUEED  167 

11  Sure  thing.  But  I  don't  catch  the  conversation.  What 
was  all  that  con  you  were  giving  me  — ?" 

"Con?" 

"About  Johnson  and  the  triangles." 

"It  simply  occurred  to  me  to  tell  you  a  funny  story,  of 
the  sort  that  men  are  known  to  like,  with  the  hope  of 
amusing  you  — " 

"Why,  that  was  n't  a  funny  story,  Doc." 

"I  assure  you  that  it  was." 

"Don't  see  it,"  said  Klinker. 

"That  is  not  my  responsibility,  in  any  sense." 

Thus  Doctor  Queed,  sitting  stiffly  on  his  hard  little  chair, 
and  gazing  with  annoyance  at  Klinker  through  the  iron 
bars  at  the  foot  of  the  bed. 

"Blest  if  I  pipe,"  said  Buck,  and  scratched  his  head. 

"I  cannot  both  tell  the  stories  and  furnish  the  brains 
to  appreciate  them.  Kindly  proceed  with  what  you  were 
telling  me." 

So  Buck,  obliging  but  mystified,  dropped  back  upon  the 
bed  and  proceeded,  tooth-pick  energetically  at  work.  His 
theme  was  a  problem  with  which  nearly  every  city  is  un 
happily  familiar.  In  Buck's  terminology,  it  was  identified 
as  "The  Centre  Street  mashers":  those  pimply,  weak- 
faced,  bad-eyed  young  men  who  congregate  at  prominent 
corners  every  afternoon,  especially  Saturdays,  to  smirk  at 
the  working-girls,  and  to  pass,  wherever  they  could,  from 
their  murmured,  "Hello,  Kiddo,"  and  "Where  you  goin', 
baby?"  to  less  innocent  things. 

Buck's  air  of  leisureliness  dropped  from  him  as  he  talked ; 
his  orange-stick  worked  ever  more  and  more  furiously;  his 
honest  voice  grew  passionate  as  he  described  conditions  as 
he  knew  them. 

'  .  .  .  And  some  fool  of  a  girl,  no  more  than  a  child  for 
knowing  what  she's  doin',  laughs  and  answers  back  —  just 
for  the  fun  of  it,  not  looking  for  harm,  and  right  there's 
where  your  trouble  begins.  Maybe  that  night  after  doin' 
the  picture  shows;  maybe  another  night;  but  it's  sure  to 


168  QUEED 

come.  Dammit,  Doc,  I  'm  no  saint  nor  sam-singer  and  I  've 
done  things  I  had  n't  ought  like  other  men,  and  woke  up 
shamed  the  next  morning,  too,  but  I  Ve  got  a  sister  who 's  a 
decent  good  girl  as  there  is  anywhere,  and  by  God,  sir,  I  'd 
kill  a  man  who  just  looked  at  her  with  the  dirty  eyes  of  them 
little  soft-mouth  blaggards!" 

Queed,  unaffectedly  interested,  asked  the  usual  question 
—  could  not  the  girls  be  taught  at  home  the  dangers  of 
such  acquaintances?  —  and  Buck  pulverized  it  in  the  usual 
way. 

"Who  in  blazes  is  goin'  to  teach  'em?  Don't  you  know 
anything  about  what  kind  of  homes  they  got?  Why,  man, 
they're  the  sisters  of  the  little  blaggards /" 

He  painted  a  dark  picture  of  the  home-life  of  many  of 
these  girls :  its  hard  work  and  unrelenting  poverty ;  its  cheer- 
lessness;  the  absence  of  any  fun;  the  irresistible  allurement 
of  the  flashily-dressed  stranger  who  jingles  money  in  his 
pocket  and  offers  to  "show  a  good  time."  Then  he  told  a 
typical  story,  the  story  of  a  little  girl  he  knew,  who  worked 
in  a  department  store  for  three  dollars  and  a  half  a  week,  and 
whose  drunken  father  took  over  the  last  cent  of  that  every 
Saturday  night.  This  girl's  name  was  Eva  Bernheimer,  and 
she  was  sixteen  years  old  and  "in  trouble." 

"You  know  what,  Doc?"  Buck  ended.  "You'd  ought  to 
take  it  up  in  the  Post  —  that 's  what.  There 's  a  fine  piece 
to  be  written,  showin'  up  them  little  hunters." 

It  was  characteristic  of  Doctor  Queed  that  such  an  idea 
had  not  and  would  not  have  occurred  to  him:  applying 
his  new  science  of  editorial  writing  to  a  practical  problem 
dipped  from  the  stream  of  every-day  life  was  still  rather 
beyond  him.  But  it  was  also  characteristic  of  him  that,  once 
the  idea  had  been  suggested  to  him,  he  instantly  perceived 
its  value.  He  looked  at  Buck  admiringly  through  the  iron 
bars. 

"  You  are  quite  right.  There  is." 

"You  know  they  are  trying  to  get  up  a  reformatory  — 
girls'  home,  some  call  it.  That's  all  right,  if  you  can't  do 


QUEED  169 

better,  but  it  don't  get  to  the  bottom  of  it.  The  right  way 
with  a  thing  like  this  is  to  take  it  before  it  happens!1' 

"You  are  quite  right,  Buck." 

"Yes  —  but  how 're  you  goin'  to  do  it?  You  sit  up  here 
all  day  and  night  with  your  books  and  studies,  Doc  — 
where's  your  cure  for  a  sorry  trouble  like  this?" 

"That  is  a  fair  question.  I  cannot  answer  definitely  until 
I  have  studied  the  situation  out  in  a  practical  way.  But  I 
will  say  that  the  general  problem  is  one  of  the  most  difficult 
with  which  social  science  has  to  deal." 

"  I  know  what  had  ought  to  be  done.  The  blaggards  ought 
to  be  shot.  Damn  every  last  one  of  them,  I  say." 

Klinker  conversed  in  his  anger  something  like  the  ladies 
of  Billingsgate,  but  Queed  did  not  notice  this.  He  sat  back 
in  his  chair,  absorbedly  thinking  that  here,  at  all  events, 
was  a  theme  which  had  enough  practical  relation  with  life. 
He  himself  had  seen  a  group  of  the  odious  "mashers"  with 
his  own  eyes;  Buck  had  pointed  them  out  as  they  walked 
up.  Never  had  a  social  problem  come  so  close  home  to  him 
as  this:  not  a  thing  of  text-book  theories,  but  a  burning 
issue  working  out  around  the  corner  on  people  that  Klinker 
knew.  And  Klinker 's  question  had  been  an  acute  one,  chal 
lenging  the  immediate  value  of  social  science  itself. 

His  thought  veered,  swept  out  of  its  channel  by  an  un 
wonted  wave  of  bitterness.  Klinker  had  offered  him  this 
material,  Klinker  had  advised  him  to  write  an  editorial 
about  it,  Klinker  had  pointed  out  for  him,  in  almost  a 
superior  way,  just  where  the  trouble  lay.  Nor  was  this  all. 
Of  late  everybody  seemed  to  be  giving  him  advice.  Only 
the  other  week  it  was  Fifi;  and  that  same  day,  the  young 
lady  Charles  Weyland.  What  was  there  about  him  that 
invited  this  sort  of  thing?  .  .  .  And  he  was  going  to  take 
Klinker's  advice ;  he  had  seized  upon  it  gratefully.  Nor  could 
he  say  that  he  was  utterly  insensate  to  Fifi 's :  he  had  caught 
himself  saying  over  part  of  it  not  ten  minutes  ago.  As  for 
Charles  Weyland 's  ripsaw  criticisms,  he  had  analyzed  them 
dispassionately,  as  he  had  promised,  and  his  reason  rejected 


170  QUEED 

them  in  toto.  Yet  he  could  not  exactly  say  that  he  had 
wholly  purged  them  out  of  his  mind.  No  .  .  .  the  fact  was 
that  some  of  her  phrases  had  managed  to  burn  themselves 
into  his  brain. 

Presently  Klinker  said  another  thing  that  his  friend  the 
little  Doctor  remembered  for  a  long  time. 

"Do  you  know  what's  the  finest  line  in  Scripture,  Doc? 
But  He  spake  of  the  temple  of  His  body.  I  heard  a  minister 
get  that  off  in  a  church  once,  in  a  sermon,  and  I  don't  guess 
I  '11  ever  forget  it.  A  dandy,  ain't  it?  ...  Exercise  and  live 
straight.  Keep  your  temple  strong  and  clean.  If  I  was  a 
parson,  I  tell  you,  I'd  go  right  to  Seventh  and  Centre  next 
Saturday  and  give  a  talk  to  them  blaggards  on  that.  But 
He  spake  of  .  .  ." 

Klinker  stopped  as  though  he  had  been  shot.  A  sudden 
agonized  scream  from  downstairs  jerked  him  off  the  bed  and 
to  his  feet  in  a  second  solemn  as  at  the  last  trump.  He 
stared  at  Queed  wide-eyed,  his  honest  red  face  suddenly 
white. 

"God  forgive  me  for  talkin'  so  loud.  .  .  .  I'd  ought  to 
have  known.  ..." 

"What  is  it?  Who  was  that?  "  demanded  Queed,  startled 
more  by  Klinker's  look  than  by  that  scream. 

But  Klinker  only  turned  and  slipped  softly  out  of  the 
door,  tipping  on  his  toes  as  though  somebody  near  at  hand 
were  asleep. 

Queed  was  left  bewildered,  and  completely  at  a  loss. 
Whatever  the  matter  was,  it  clearly  concerned  Buck  Klinker. 
Equally  clearly,  it  did  not  concern  him.  People  had  a  right 
to  scream  if  they  felt  that  way,  without  having  a  horde  of 
boarders  hurry  out  and  call  them  to  book. 

However,  his  scientist's  fondness  for  getting  at  the 
underlying  causes  —  or  as  some  call  it,  curiosity  —  pres 
ently  obtained  control  of  him,  and  he  went  downstairs. 

There  is  no  privacy  of  grief  in  the  communism  of  a 
middle-class  boarding-house.  It  is  ordered  that  your  neigh 
bor  shall  gaze  upon  your  woe  and  you  shall  stare  at  his 


QUEED  171 

anguish,  when  both  are  new  and  raw.  That  cry  of  pain  had 
been  instantly  followed  by  a  stir  of  movement;  a  little 
shiver  ran  through  the  house.  Doors  opened  and  shut; 
voices  murmured;  quick  feet  sounded  on  the  stairs.  Now 
the  boarders  were  gathered  in  the  parlor,  very  still  and 
solemn,  yet  not  to  save  their  lives  unaware  that  for  them 
the  humdrum  round  was  to  go  on  just  the  same.  And  here, 
of  course,  is  no  matter  of  a  boarding-house :  for  queens  must 
eat  though  kings  lie  high  in  state. 

To  Mrs.  Paynter's  parlor  came  a  girl,  white-faced  and 
shadowy-eyed,  but  for  those  hours  at  least,  calm  and  tear 
less  and  the  mistress  of  herself.  The  boarders  rose  as  she 
appeared  in  the  door,  and  she  saw  that  after  all  she  had  no 
need  to  tell  them  anything.  They  came  and  took  her  hand, 
one  by  one,  which  was  the  hardest  to  bear,  and  even  Mr. 
Bylash  seemed  touched  with  a  new  dignity,  and  even  Miss 
Miller's  pompadour  looked  human  and  sorry.  But  two 
faces  Miss  Weyland  did  not  see  among  the  kind-eyed 
boarders:  the  old  professor,  who  had  locked  himself  in  his 
room,  and  the  little  Doctor  who  was  at  that  moment  coming 
down  the  steps. 

"  Supper's  very  late,"  said  she.  "Emma  and  Laura  .  .  . 
have  been  much  upset.  I'll  have  it  on  the  table  in  a 
minute." 

She  turned  into  the  hall  and  saw  Queed  on  the  stairs. 
He  halted  his  descent  five  steps  from  the  bottom,  and  she 
came  to  the  banisters  and  stood  and  looked  up  at  him. 
And  if  any  memory  of  their  last  meeting  was  with  them  then, 
neither  of  them  gave  any  sign  of  it. 

"  You  know  —  ?" 

"No,  I  don't  know,"  he  replied,  disturbed  by  her  look, 
he  did  not  know  why,  and  involuntarily  lowering  his  voice. 
"I  came  down  expressly  to  find  out." 

"Fifi  —  She—" 

"Is  worse  again?" 

"She  .  .  .  stopped  breathing  a  few  minutes  ago." 

"Dead!" 


172  QUEED 

Sharlee  winced  visibly  at  the  word,  as  the  fresh  stricken 
always  will. 

The  little  Doctor  turned  his  head  vaguely  away.  The 
house  was  so  still  that  the  creaking  of  the  stairs  as  his  weight 
shifted  from  one  foot  to  another,  sounded  horribly  loud ;  he 
noticed  it,  and  regretted  having  moved.  The  idea  of  Fifi's 
dying  had  of  course  never  occurred  to  him.  Something  put 
into  his  head  the  simple  thought  that  he  would  never  help 
the  little  girl  with  her  algebra  again,  and  at  once  he  was 
conscious  of  an  odd  and  decidedly  unpleasant  sensation, 
somewhere  far  away  inside  of  him.  He  felt  that  he  ought  to 
say  something,  to  sum  up  his  attitude  toward  the  unexpected 
event,  but  for  once  in  his  life  he  experienced  a  difficulty  in 
formulating  his  thought  in  precise  language.  However,  the 
pause  was  of  the  briefest. 

"I  think,"  said  Sharlee,  "the  funeral  will  be  Monday 
afternoon.  .  .  .  You  will  go,  won't  you?" 

Queed  turned  upon  her  a  clouded  brow.  The  thought  of 
taking  personal  part  in  such  mummery  as  a  funeral  — 
"barbaric  rites,"  he  called  them  in  the  forthcoming  Work  — 
was  entirely  distasteful  to  him.  "No,"  he  said,  hastily. 
"No,  I  could  hardly  do  that  — " 

"Fifi  —  would  like  it.  It  is  the  last  time  you  will  have 
to  do  anything  for  her." 

"Like  it  ?  It  is  hardly  as  if  she  would  know  — !" 

"Mightn't  you  show  your  regard  for  a  friend  just  the 
same,  even  if  your  friend  was  never  to  know  about  it?  ... 
Besides  —  I  think  of  these  things  another  way,  and  so  did 
Fifi." 

He  peered  down  at  her  over  the  banisters,  oddly  dis 
quieted.  The  flaring  gas  lamp  beat  mercilessly  upon  her 
face,  and  it  occurred  to  him  that  she  looked  tired  around  her 
eyes. 

"  I  think  Fifi  will  know  .  .  .  and  be  glad,"  said  Sharlee. 
"She  liked  and  admired  you.  Only  day  before  yesterday 
she  spoke  of  you.  Now  she  .  .  .  has  gone,  and  this  is  the 
one  way  left  for  any  of  us  to  show  that  we  are  sorry." 


QUEED  173 

Long  afterwards,  Queed  thought  that  if  Charles  Wey 
land's  lashes  had  not  glittered  with  sudden  tears  at  that 
moment  he  would  have  refused  her.    But  her  lashes  did  so 
glitter,  and  he  capitulated  at  once;  and  turning  instantly 
went  heavy-hearted  up  the  stairs. 


XV 

In  a  Country  Churchyard,  and  afterwards;  of  Friends :  how 
they  take  your  Time  while  they  live,  and  then  die,  up 
setting  your  Evening's  Work;  and  what  Buck  Klinker  saw 
in  the  Scriptorium  at  2  a.  m. 

QUEED  was  caught,  like  many  another  rationalist 
before  him,  by  the  stirring  beauty  of  the  burial 
service  of  the  English  church. 

Fifi's  funeral  was  in  the  country,  at  a  little  church  set 
down  in  a  beautiful  grove  which  reminds  all  visitors  of  the 
saying  about  God's  first  temples.  Near  here  Mrs.  Paynter 
was  born  and  spent  her  girlhood ;  here  Fifi,  before  her  last  ill 
ness,  had  come  every  Sabbath  morning  to  the  Sunday- 
school;  here  lay  the  little  strip  of  God's  acre  that  the  now 
childless  widow  called  her  own.  You  come  by  the  new  elec 
tric  line,  one  of  those  high-speed  suburban  roads  which,  all 
over  the  country,  are  doing  so  much  to  persuade  city  people 
back  to  the  land.  The  cars  are  steam-road  size.  Two  of 
them  had  been  provided  for  the  mourners,  and  there  was  no 
room  to  spare ;  for  the  Paynter  family  connection  was  large, 
and  it  seemed  that  little  Fifi  had  many  friends. 

From  Stop  II,  where  the  little  station  is,  your  course 
is  by  the  woodland  path ;  past  the  little  springhouse,  over 
the  tiny  rustic  bridge,  and  so  on  up  the  shady  slope  to  the 
cluster  of  ancient  pines.  In  the  grove  stood  carriages;  buggy 
horses  reined  to  the  tall  trees;  even  that  abomination  around 
a  church,  the  motor  of  the  vandals.  In  the  walk  through 
the  woods,  Queed  found  himself  side  by  side  with  a  fat, 
scarlet-faced  man,  who  wore  a  vest  with  brass  buttons  and 
immediately  began  talking  to  him  like  a  lifelong  friend. 
He  was  a  motorman  on  the  suburban  line,  it  seemed,  and 
had  known  Fifi  very  well. 


QUEED  175 

"No,  sir,  I  would  n't  believe  it  when  my  wife  seen  it  in 
the  paper  and  called  it  out  to  me,  an'  I  says  there's  some 
mistake,  you  can  be  sure,  and  she  says  no,  here  it  is  in  the 
paper,  you  can  read  it  for  y'self.  But  I  would  n't  believe 
it  till  I  went  by  the  house  on  the  way  to  my  run,  and  there 
was  the  crape  on  the  door.  An'  I  tell  you,  suh,  I  could  n't 
a  felt  worse  if  't  was  one  o'  my  own  kids.  Why,  it  seems  like 
only  the  other  morning  she  skipped  onto  my  car,  laughin' 
and  sayin',  'How  are  you  to-day,  Mr.  Barnes?'  Why  she 
and  me  been  buddies  for  nigh  three  years,  and  she  took  my 
9.30  north  car  every  Sunday  morning,  rain  or  shine,  just  as 
reg'lar,  and  was  the  only  one  I  ever  let  stand  out  on  my 
platform,  bein'  strictly  agin  all  rules,  and  my  old  partner 
Hornheim  was  fired  for  allowin'  it,  it  ain't  six  months  since. 
But  what  could  I  do  when  she  asked  me,  please,  Mr.  Barnes, 
with  that  sweet  face  o'  hers,  and  her  rememberin'  me  every 
Christmas  that  came  along  just  like  I  was  her  Pa.  .  .  ." 

The  motorman  talked  too  much,  but  he  proved  useful  in 
finding  seats  up  near  the  front,  where,  being  fat,  he  took 
up  considerably  more  than  his  share  of  room. 

Unless  Tim  had  taken  him  to  the  Cathedral  once,  twenty 
years  ago,  it  was  the  first  time  that  Queed  had  ever  been 
inside  a  church.  He  had  read  Renan  at  fourteen,  finally 
discarding  all  religious  beliefs  in  the  same  year.  Approxi 
mately  Spencer's  First  Cause  satisfied  his  reason,  though 
he  meant  to  buttress  Spencer's  contention  in  its  weakest 
place  and  carry  it  deeper  than  Spencer  did.  But  in  fact,  the 
exact  limits  he  should  assign  to  religious  beliefs  as  an  evolu 
tionary  function  were  still  indeterminate  in  his  system. 
He,  like  all  cosmic  philosophers,  found  this  the  most  baffling 
and  elusive  of  all  his  problems.  Meantime,  here  in  this  little 
country  church,  he  was  to  witness  the  supreme  rite  of  the 
supreme  religious  belief.  There  was  some  compensation 
for  his  enforced  attendance  in  that  thought.  He  looked 
about  him  with  genuine  and  candid  interest.  The  hush,  the 
dim  light,  the  rows  upon  rows  of  sober-faced  people,  seemed 
to  him  properly  impressive.  He  was  struck  by  the  wealth 


1 76  QUEED 

of  flowers  massed  all  over  the  chancel,  and  wondered  if  that 
was  its  regular  state.  The  pulpit  and  the  lectern ;  the  altar, 
which  he  easily  identified;  the  stained-glass  windows  with 
their  obviously  symbolic  pictures;  the  bronze  pipes  of  the 
little  organ;  the  unvested  choir,  whose  function  he  vaguely 
made  out  —  over  all  these  his  intelligent  eye  swept,  curi 
ously;  and  lastly  it  went  out  of  the  open  window  and  lost 
itself  in  the  quiet  sunny  woods  outside. 

Strange  and  full  of  wonder.  This  incredible  instinct  for 
adoration  —  this  invincible  insistence  in  believing,  in  defi 
ance  of  all  reason,  that  man  was  not  born  to  die  as  the  flesh 
dies.  What,  after  all,  was  the  full  significance  of  this  unique 
phenomenon? 

/  am  the  resurrection  and  the  life,  saith  the  Lord;  he  that 
believeth  in  me,  though  he  were  dead,  yet  shall  he  live.  .  .  . 

A  loud  resonant  voice  suddenly  cut  the  hush  with  these 
words  and  immediately  they  were  all  standing.  Queed  was 
among  the  first  to  rise;  the  movement  was  like  a  reflex 
action.  For  there  was  something  in  the  thrilling  timbre  of 
that  voice  that  seemed  to  pull  him  to  his  feet  regardless  of 
his  will;  something,  in  fact,  that  impelled  him  to  crane  his 
neck  around  and  peer  down  the  dim  aisle  to  discover  imme 
diately  who  was  the  author  of  it. 

His  eye  fell  on  a  young  man  advancing,  clad  in  white  robes 
the  like  of  which  he  had  never  seen,  and  wearing  the  look 
of  the  morning  upon  his  face.  In  his  hands  he  bore  an  open 
book,  but  he  did  not  glance  at  it.  His  head  was  thrown 
back;  his  eyes  seemed  fastened  on  something  outside  and 
beyond  the  church;  and  he  rolled  out  the  victorious  words 
as  though  he  would  stake  all  that  he  held  dearest  in  this 
world  that  their  prophecy  was  true. 

Whom  I  shall  see  for  myself,  and  MINE  eyes  shall  behold, 
and  not  another.  .  .  . 

But  behind  the  young  man  rolled  a  little  stand  on  wheels, 
on  which  lay  a  long  box  banked  in  flowers ;  and  though  the 
little  Doctor  had  never  been  at  a  funeral  before,  and  never 
in  the  presence  of  death,  he  knew  that  here  must  lie  the 


QUEED  177 

mortal  remains  of  his  little  friend,  Fifi.  From  this  point 
onward  Queed's  interest  in  the  service  became,  so  to  say, 
less  purely  scientific. 

There  was  some  antiphonal  reciting,  and  then  a  long 
selection  which  the  young  man  in  robes  read  with  the  same 
voice  of  solemn  triumph.  It  is  doubtful  if  anybody  in  the 
church  followed  him  with  the  fascinated  attention  of  the 
young  evolutionist.  Soon  the  organ  rumbled,  and  the  little 
choir,  standing,  broke  into  song. 

For  all  the  Saints  who  from  their  labors  rest  .  .  . 

Saints!  Well,  well,  was  it  imaginable  that  they  thought  of 
Fifi  that  way  already  ?  Why,  it  was  only  three  weeks  ago 
that  he  had  sent  her  the  roses  and  she  .  .  . 

A  black-gloved  hand,  holding  an  open  book,  descended  out 
of  the  dim  space  behind  him.  It  came  to  him,  as  by  an  in 
spiration,  that  the  book  was  being  offered  for  his  use  in 
some  mysterious  connection.  He  grasped  it  gingerly,  and 
his  friend  the  motorman,  jabbing  at  the  text  with  a  scarlet 
hand,  whispered  raucously:  " 'S  what  they're  singin'." 
But  the  singers  had  traveled  far  before  the  young  man  was 
able  to  find  and  follow  them. 

And  when  the  strife  is  fierce,  the  warfare  long, 

Steals  on  the  ear  the  distant  triumph  song, 

And  hearts  are  brave  again,  and  arms  are  strong. 

The  girls  in  the  choir  sang  on,  untroubled  by  a  doubt :  — - 

But  lo,  there  breaks  a  yet  more  glorious  day; 
The  saints  triumphant  rise  in  bright  array; 
The  King  of  glory  passes  on  His  way. 

They  marched  outside  following  the  flower-banked  casket 
into  the  little  cemetery,  and  Queed  stood  with  bared  head 
like  the  others,  watching  the  committal  of  dust  unto  dust. 
In  the  forefront  of  the  mournful  gathering,  nearest  the 
grave's  edge,  there  stood  three  women  heavily  swathed  in 
black.  Through  all  the  rite  now,  suppressed  sobbing  ran 
like  a  motif.  Soon  fell  upon  all  ears  the  saddest  of  all 


178  QUEED 

sounds,  the  pitiless  thud  of  the  first  earth  upon  the  stiff  lid. 
On  the  other  side  of  the  irregular  circle,  Queed  saw  the 
coarse  red  motorman ;  tears  were  rolling  down  his  fat  cheeks ; 
but  never  noticing  them  he  was  singing  loudly,  far  off  the 
key,  from  the  book  the  black-gloved  hand  had  given  Queed. 
The  hymn  they  were  singing  now  also  spoke  surely  and 
naturally  of  the  saints.  The  same  proud  note,  the  young 
man  observed,  ran  through  the  service  from  beginning  to 
end.  Hymn  and  prayer  and  reading  all  confidently  assumed 
that  Fifi  was  dead  only  to  this  mortal  eye,  but  in  another 
world,  open  to  all  those  gathered  about  the  grave  for  their 
seeking,  she  lived  in  some  marvelously  changed  form  —  her 
body  being  made  like  unto  his  own  glorious  body.  .  .  . 

In  the  homeward-bound  car,  Queed  fully  recaptured  his 
poise,  and  redirected  his  thoughts  into  rational  channels. 

The  doctrine  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  had  not  a  ra 
tional  leg  to  stand  on.  The  anima,  or  spirit,  being  merely 
the  product  of  certain  elements  combined  in  life,  was  wiped 
out  when  those  elements  dissolved  their  union  in  death.  It 
was  the  flame  of  a  candle  blown  out.  Yet  with  what  unbe 
lievable  persistence  this  doctrine  had  survived  through  his 
tory.  Science  had  annihilated  it  again  and  again,  but^these 
people  resolutely  stopped  their  ears  to  science.  They  could 
not  answer  science  with  argument,  so  they  had  answered 
her  with  the  axe  and  the  stake ;  and  they  were  still  capable 
of  doing  that  whenever  they  thought  it  desirable.  Strange 
spectacle!  What  was  the  "conflict  between  Religion  and 
Science"  but  man's  desperate  struggle  against  his  own  rea 
son?  Benjamin  Kidd  had  that  right  at  any  rate. 

Yet  did  these  people  really  believe  their  doctrine  of  the 
saved  body  and  the  saved  soul?  They  said  they  did,  but 
did  they?  If  they  believed  it  surely,  as  they  believed  that 
this  night  would  be  followed  by  a  new  day,  if  they  believed 
it  passionately  as  they  believed  that  money  is  the  great 
earthly  good,  then  certainly  the  biggest  of  their  worldly 
affairs  would  be  less  than  a  grain  of  sand  by  the  sea  against 
the  everlasting  glories  that  awaited  them.  Yet  .  .  .  look 


QUEED  179 

at  them  all  about  him  in  the  car,  these  people  who  told 
themselves  that  they  had  started  Fifi  on  the  way  to  be  a 
saint,  in  which  state  they  expected  to  remeet  her.  Did  they 
so  regard  their  worldly  affairs?  By  to-morrow  they  would 
be  at  each  other's  throats,  squabbling,  cheating,  slandering, 
lying,  fighting  desperately  to  gain  some  ephemeral  advan 
tage  —  all  under  the  eye  of  the  magnificent  guerdon  they 
pretended  to  believe  in  and  knew  they  were  jeopardizing 
by  such  acts.  No,  it  was  pure  self-hypnosis.  Weak  man 
demanded  offsets  for  his  earthly  woes,  and  he  had  concocted 
them  in  a  world  of  his  own  imagining.  That  was  the  history 
of  man's  religions;  the  concoction  of  other-worldly  offsets 
for  worldly  woes.  In  their  heart  of  hearts,  all  knew  that 
they  were  concoctions,  and  the  haruspices  laughed  when 
they  met  each  other. 

Supper  was  early  at  Mrs.  Paynter's,  as  though  to  atone 
for  the  tardiness  of  yesterday.  The  boarders  dispatched  it 
not  without  recurring  cheerfulness,  broken  now  and  again 
by  fits  of  decorous  silence.  You  could  see  that  by  to-morrow, 
or<it  might  be  next  day,  the  house  would  be  back  in  its  nor 
mal  swing  again. 

Mr.  Queed  withdrew  to  his  little  chamber.  He  trod  the 
steps  softly  for  once,  and  perhaps  this  was  why,  as  he  passed 
Mrs.  Paynter's  room,  his  usually  engrossed  ear  caught  the 
sound  of  weeping,  quiet  but  unrestrained,  ceaseless,  racking 
weeping,  running  on  evermore,  the  weeping  of  Rachel  for 
her  children,  who  would  not  be  comforted. 

The  little  Doctor  shut  the  door  of  the  Scriptorium  and  lit 
the  gas.  So  far,  his  custom;  but  here  his  whim  and  his 
wont  parted.  Instead  of  seating  himself  at  his  table,  where 
the  bound  Post  for  January-March,  1902,  awaited  his  ex 
ploration,  he  laid  himself  down  on  his  tiny  bed. 

If  he  were  to  die  to-night,  who  would  weep  for  him  like 
that? 

The  thought  had  come  unbidden  to  his  mind  and  stuck 
in  his  metaphysics  like  a  burr.  Now  he  remembered  that 
the  question  was  not  entirely  a  new  one.  Fifi  had  once  asked 


i8o  QUEED 

him  who  would  be  sorry  if  he  died,  and  had  answered  herself 
by  saying  that  she  would.  However,  Fifi  was  dead,  and 
therefore  released  from  her  promise. 

Yes,  Fifi  was  dead.  He  would  never  help  her  with  her 
algebra  again.  The  thought  filled  him  with  vague,  unaccount 
able  regrets.  He  felt  that  he  would  willingly  take  twenty 
minutes  a  night  from  the  wrecked  Schedule  to  have  her 
come  back,  but  unfortunately  there  was  no  way  of  arranging 
that  now.  He  remembered  the  night  he  had  sent  Fifi  out 
of  the  dining-room  for  coughing,  and  the  remembrance 
made  him  distinctly  uncomfortable.  He  rather  wished  that 
he  had  told  Fifi  he  was  sorry  about  that,  but  it  was  too  late 
now.  Still  he  had  told  her  that  he  was  her  friend;  he  was 
glad  to  remember  that.  But  here,  from  a  new  point  of  view, 
was  the  trouble  about  having  friends.  They  took  your  time 
while  they  lived,  and  then  they  went  off  and  died  and  upset 
your  evening's  work. 

Clearly,  Fifi  left  behind  many  sorrowful  friends,  as  shown 
by  her  remarkable  funeral.  If  he  himself  were  to  die,  Tim 
and  Murphy  Queed  would  probably  feel  sorrowful,  but  they 
would  hardly  come  to  the  funeral.  For  one  thing,  Tim 
could  not  come  because  of  his  duties  on  the  force,  and 
Murphy,  for  all  he  knew,  was  undergoing  incarceration. 
About  the  only  person  he  could  think  of  as  a  probable 
attendant  at  his  graveside  was  William  Klinker.  Yes,  Buck 
would  certainly  be  there,  though  it  was  asking  a  good  deal 
to  expect  him  to  weep.  A  funeral  consisting  of  only  one 
person  would  look  rather  odd  to  those  who  were  familiar 
with  such  crowded  churches  as  that  he  had  seen  to-day. 
People  passing  by  would  nudge  each  other  and  say  that  the 
dead  must  have  led  an  eccentric  life,  indeed,  to  be  so  alone 
at  the  end.  .  .  .  Come  to  think  of  it,  though,  there  would 
n't  be  any  funeral.  He  had  nothing  to  do  with  those  most 
interesting  but  clearly  barbaric  rites.  Of  course  his  body 
would  be  cremated  by  directions  in  the  will.  The  operation 
would  be  private,  attracting  no  attention  from  anybody. 
Buck  would  make  the  arrangements.  He  tried  to  picture 
Buck  weeping  near  the  incinerator,  and  failed. 


QUEED  181 

Then  there  was  his  father,  whom,  in  twenty-four  years' 
sharing  of  the  world  together,  he  had  never  met.  The  man's 
behavior  was  odd,  to  say  the  least.  From  the  world's  point 
of  view  he  had  declined  to  own  his  son.  For  such  an  unusual 
breach  of  custom,  there  must  be  some  adequate  explana 
tion,  and  the  circumstances  all  pointed  one  way.  This  was 
that  his  mother  (whom  his  boyhood  had  pictured  as  a 
woman  of  distinction  who  had  eloped  with  somebody  far 
beneath  her)  had  failed  to  marry  his  father.  The  persistent 
mystery  about  his  birth  had  always  made  him  skeptical  of 
Tim's  statement  that  he  had  been  present  at  the  marriage. 
But  he  rarely  thought  of  the  matter  at  all  now.  The  moral 
responsibility  was  none  of  his;  and  as  for  a  name,  Queed 
was  as  good  as  any  other.  X  or  Y  was  a  good  enough  name 
for  a  real  man,  whose  life  could  demonstrate  his  utter  inde 
pendence  of  the  labels  so  carefully  pasted  upon  him  by  en 
vironment  and  circumstance. 

Still,  if  he  were  to  die,  he  felt  that  his  father,  if  yet  alive, 
should  come  forward  and  weep  for  him,  even  as  Mrs. 
Paynter  was  weeping  for  Fifi  down  in  the  Second  Front. 
He  should  stand  out  like  a  man  and  take  from  Buck's  hand 
the  solemn  ceremonies  of  cremation.  He  tried  to  picture 
his  father  weeping  near  the  incinerator,  and  failed,  partly 
owing  to  the  mistiness  surrounding  that  gentleman's  bodily 
appearance.  He  felt  that  his  father  was  dodging  his  just  re 
sponsibilities.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  perceived  that, 
under  certain  circumstances,  it  might  be  an  advantage  to 
have  some  definite  individual  to  whom  you  can  point  and 
say:  "There  goes  my  father." 

As  it  was,  it  all  came  down  to  him  and  Buck.  He  and 
Buck  were  alone  in  the  world  together.  He  rather  clung 
to  the  thought  of  Buck,  and  instantly  caught  himself  at  it. 
Very  well;  let  him  take  it  that  way  then.  Take  Buck  as  a 
symbol  of  the  world,  of  those  friendships  which  played  such 
certain  havoc  with  a  man's  Schedule.  Was  he  glad  that  he 
had  Buck  or  was  he  not? 

The  little  Doctor  lay  on  his  back  in  the  glare  thinking 


182  QUEED 

things  out.  The  gas  in  his  eyes  was  an  annoyance,  but  he 
did  not  realize  it,  and  so  did  not  get  up,  as  another  man 
would  have  done,  and  put  it  out. 

Certainly  it  was  an  extraordinary  thing  that  the  only 
critics  he  had  ever  had  in  his  life  had  all  three  attacked 
his  theory  of  living  at  precisely  the  same  point.  They 
had  all  three  urged  him  to  get  in  touch  with  his  environ 
ment.  He  himself  could  unanswerably  demonstrate  that 
in  such  degree  as  he  succeeded  in  isolating  himself  from  his 
environment  —  at  least  until  his  great  work  was  done  — 
in  just  that  degree  would  his  life  be  successful.  But  these 
three  seemed  to  declare,  with  the  confidence  of  those  who 
state  an  axiom,  that  in  just  that  degree  was  his  life  a  failure. 
Of  course  they  could  not  demonstrate  their  contention  as 
he  could  demonstrate  his,  but  the  absence  of  reasoning  did 
not  appear  to  shake  their  assurance  in  the  smallest.  Here 
then  was  another  apparent  conflict  of  instinct  with  reason: 
their  instinct  with  his  reason.  Perhaps  he  might  have  dis 
missed  the  whole  thing  as  merely  their  religion,  but  that  his 
father,  with  that  mysterious  letter  of  counsel,  was  among 
them.  He  did  not  picture  his  father  as  a  religious  man. 
Besides,  Fifi,  asked  point-blank  if  that  was  her  religion, 
had  denied,  assuring  him,  singularly  enough,  that  it  was 
only  common-sense. 

And  among  them,  among  all  the  people  that  had  touched 
him  in  this  new  life,  there  was  no  denying  that  he  had  had 
some  curiously  unsettling  experiences. 

He  had  been  ready  to  turn  the  pages  of  the  book  of  life 
for  Fifi,  an  infant  at  his  knee,  and  all  at  once  Fifi  had  taken 
the  book  from  his  hands  and  read  aloud,  in  a  language 
which  was  quite  new  to  him,  a  lecture  on  his  own  short 
comings.  There  was  no  denying  that  her  question  about 
his  notions  on  altruism  had  given  him  an  odd,  arresting 
glimpse  of  himself  from  a  new  peak.  He  had  set  out  in  his 
pride  to  punish  Mr.  Pat,  and  Mr.  Pat  had  severely  punished 
him,  revealing  him  humiliatingly  to  himself  as  a  physical 
incompetent.  He  had  dismissed  Buck  Klinker  as  a  faintly 


QUEED  183 

amusing  brother  to  the  ox,  and  now  Buck  Klinker  was 
giving  him  valuable  advice  about  his  editorial  work,  to  say 
nothing  of  jerking  him  by  the  ears  toward  physical  compe 
tency.  He  had  thought  to  honor  the  Post  by  contributing 
of  his  wisdom  to  it,  and  the  Post  had  replied  by  contemptu 
ously  kicking  him  out.  He  had  laughed  at  Colonel  Cowles's 
editorials,  and  now  he  was  staying  out  of  bed  of  nights 
slavishly  struggling  to  imitate  them.  He  had  meant  to  give 
Miss  Weyland  some  expert  advice  some  day  about  the 
running  of  her  department,  and  suddenly  she  had  turned 
about  and  stamped  him  as  an  all-around  failure,  meet  not 
for  reverence,  but  the  laughter  and  pity  of  men. 

So  far  as  he  knew,  nobody  in  the  world  admired  him. 
They  might  admire  his  work,  but  him  personally  they  felt 
sorry  for  or  despised.  Few  even  admired  his  work.  The 
Post  had  given  him  satisfactory  proof  of  that.  Conant, 
Willoughby,  and  Smathers  would  admire  it  —  yes,  wish  to 
the  Lord  that  they  had  written  it.  But  would  that  fill  his 
cup  to  overflowing  ?  By  the  way,  had  not  Fifi  asked  him  that 
very  question,  too  —  whether  he  would  consider  a  life  of 
that  sort  a  successful  life?  Well  —  would  he?  Or  could  it 
imaginably  be  said  that  Fifi,  rather,  had  had  a  successful 
life,  as  evidenced  by  her  profoundly  interesting  funeral? 

Was  it  possible  that  a  great  authority  on  human  society 
could  make  himself  an  even  greater  authority  by  personally 
assuming  a  part  in  the  society  which  he  theoretically  admin 
istered?  Was  it  possible  that  he  was  missing  some  factor 
of  large  importance  by  his  addiction  to  isolation  and  a 
schedule? 

In  short,  was  it  conceivable  that  he  had  it  all  wrong  from 
the  beginning,  as  the  young  lady  Charles  Weyland  had  said  ? 

The  little  Doctor  lay  still  on  his  bed  and  his  precious 
minutes  slipped  into  hours.  ...  If  he  finished  his  book  at 
twenty-seven,  what  would  he  do  with  the  rest  of  his  life? 
Besides  defending  it  from  possible  criticism,  besides  ex 
pounding  and  amplifying  it  a  little  further  as  need  seemed 
to  be,  there  would  be  no  more  work  for  him  to  do.  Supreme 


184  OUEED 

essence  of  philosophy,  history,  and  all  science  as  it  was,  it 
was  the  final  word  of  human  wisdom.  You  might  say  that 
with  it  the  work  of  the  world  was  done.  How  then  should 
he  spend  the  remaining  thirty  or  forty  years  of  his  life? 
As  matters  stood  now  he  had,  so  to  say,  twenty  years  start 
on  himself.  Through  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  his  life, 
he  had  reached  a  point  in  his  reading  and  study  at  twenty- 
four  which  another  man  could  not  hope  to  reach  before  he 
was  forty-five  or  fifty.  Other  men  had  done  daily  work  for 
a  livelihood,  and  had  only  their  evenings  for  their  heart's 
desire.  Spencer  was  a  civil  engineer.  Mill  was  a  clerk  in  an 
India  house.  Comte  taught  mathematics.  But  he,  in  all  his 
life,  had  not  averaged  an  hour  a  week's  enforced  distraction: 
all  had  gone  to  his  own  work.  You  might  say  that  he  was 
entitled  to  a  heavy  arrears  in  this  direction.  If  he  liked,  he 
could  idle  for  ten  years,  twenty  years,  and  still  be  more  than 
abreast  of  his  age. 

And  as  it  was,  he  could  not  pretend  that  he  had  kept  the 
faith,  that  he  was  inviolably  holding  his  Schedule  unspotted 
from  the  world.  No,  he  himself  had  outraged  and  deflowered 
the  Schedule.  Klinker's  Exercises  and  the  Post  were  delib 
erate  impieties.  And  he  could  not  say  that  they  had  the 
sanction  of  his  reason.  The  exercises  had  only  a  partial 
sanction;  the  Post  no  sanction  at  all.  Both  were  but  sops 
to  wounded  pride.  Here,  then,  was  a  pretty  situation:  he, 
the  triumphant  rationalist,  the  toy  of  utterly  irrational 
impulses  —  of  an  utterly  irrational  instinct.  And  this  new 
impulse  tugging  at  his  inside,  driving  him  to  heed  the  irra 
tional  advice  of  his  critics  —  what  could  it  be  but  part  and 
parcel  of  the  same  mysterious  but  apparently  deep-seated 
instinct?  And  what  was  the  real  significance  of  this  instinct, 
and  what  in  the  name  of  Jerusalem  was  the  matter  with  him 
anyway? 

He  was  twenty-four  years  old,  without  upbringing,  and 
utterly  alone  in  the  world.  He  had  raised  himself,  body  and 
soul,  out  of  printed  books,  and  about  all  the  education  he 


QUEED  185 

ever  had  was  half  an  hour's  biting  talk  from  Charles  Wey- 
land.  Of  course  he  did  not  recognize  his  denied  youth 
when  it  rose  and  fell  upon  him,  but  he  did  recognize  that 
his  assailant  was  doughty.  He  locked  arms  with  it  and 
together  they  fell  into  undreamed  depths. 

Buck  Klinker,  returning  from  some  stag  devilry  at  the 
hour  of  two  A.  M.,  and  attracted  to  the  Scriptorium  by  the 
light  under  the  door,  found  the  little  Doctor  pacing  the  floor 
in  his  stocking  feet,  with  the  gas  blazing  and  the  shade  up  as 
high  as  it  would  go.  He  halted  in  his  marchings  to  stare 
at  Buck  with  wild  unrecognition,  and  his  face  looked  so 
white  and  fierce  that  honest  Buck,  like  the  good  friend  he 
was,  only  said,  "Well  —  good-night,  Doc,"  and  unobtru 
sively  withdrew. 


XVI 

Triumphal  Return  of  Charles  Gardiner  West  from  the  Old 
World;  and  of  how  the  Other  World  had  wagged  in  his 
Absence. 

MANY  pictured  post-cards  and  an  occasional  brief 
note  reminded  Miss  Weyland  during  the  summer 
that  Charles  Gardiner  West  was  pursuing  his 
studies  in  the  Old  World  with  peregrinative  zest.  By  the 
trail  of  colored  photographs  she  followed  his  triumphal 
march.  Rome  knew  the  president-elect  in  early  June; 
Naples,  Florence,  Milan,  Venice  in  the  same  period.  He 
investigated,  presumably,  the  public  school  systems  of 
Geneva  and  Berlin;  the  higher  education  drew  him  through 
the  chateau  country  of  France;  for  three  weeks  the  head- 
waiters  of  Paris  (in  the  pedagogical  district)  were  familiar 
with  the  clink  of  his  coin ;  and  August's  first  youth  was  gone 
before  he  was  in  London  with  the  lake  region  a  tramped 
road  behind  him. 

From  the  latter  neighborhood  (picture:  Rydal  Mount)  he 
wrote  Sharlee  as  follows: 

Sailing  on  the  2ist,  after  the  most  glorious  trip  in  history.  Never 
so  full  of  energy  and  enthusiasm.  Running  over  with  the  most  beau 
tiful  plans. 

The  exact  nature  of  these  plans  the  writer  did  not  indi 
cate,  but  Sharlee 's  mother,  who  always  got  down  to  break 
fast  first  and  read  all  the  postals  as  they  came,  explained 
that  the  reference  was  evidently  to  Blaines  College.  West, 
however,  did  not  sail  on  the  2 1st,  even  though  that  date 
was  some  days  behind  his  original  intentions.  The  itinerary 
with  which  he  had  set  out  had  him  home  again,  in  fact, 
on  August  15.  For  in  the  stress  and  hurry  of  making  ready 


QUEED  187 

for  the  journey,  together  with  a  little  preliminary  rest  which 
he  felt  his  health  required,  he  had  to  let  his  advertising  cam 
paign  and  other  schemes  for  the  good  of  the  college  go  over 
until  the  fall.  But  collegiate  methods  obtaining  in  London 
were  too  fascinating,  apparently,  to  be  dismissed  with  any 
cursory  glance.  He  sailed  on  the  25th,  arrived  home  on  the 
3rd  of  September,  and  on  the  4th  surprised  Sharlee  by  drop 
ping  in  upon  her  in  her  office. 

He  was  browned  from  his  passage,  appeared  a  little 
stouter,  was  very  well  dressed  and  good  to  look  at,  and  fairly 
exuded  vitality  and  pleasant  humor.  Sharlee  was  delighted 
and  quite  excited  over  seeing  him  again,  though  it  may 
be  noted,  as  shedding  a  side-light  upon  her  character,  that 
she  did  not  greet  him  with  "  Hello,  Stranger! "  However,  her 
manner  of  salutation  appeared  perfectly  satisfactory  to 
West. 

They  had  the  little  office  to  themselves  and  plenty  to  talk 
about. 

"Doubtless  you  got  my  postals?"  he  asked. 

"Oh,  stacks  of  them.  I  spent  all  one  Saturday  afternoon 
pasting  them  in  an  album  as  big  as  this  table.  They  made 
a  perfect  fireside  grand  tour  for  me.  What  did  you  like  best 
in  all  your  trip?" 

"I  think,"  said  West,  turning  his  handsome  blue  eyes 
full  upon  her,  "that  I  like  getting  back." 

Sharlee  laughed.  "It's  done  you  a  world  of  good;  that's 
plain,  anyway.  You  look  ready  to  remove  mountains." 

"Why,  I  can  eat  them  —  bite  their  heads  off!  I  feel  like  a 
fighting-cock  who's  been  starved  a  shade  too  long  for  the 
good  of  the  bystanders." 

He  laughed  and  waved  his  arms  about  to  signify  enormous 
vitality.  Sharlee  asked  if  he  had  been  able  to  make  a  start 
yet  with  his  new  work. 

"You  might  say,"  he  replied,  "that  I  dived  head-first  into 
it  from  the  steamer." 

He  launched  out  into  eager  talk  about  his  hopes  for 
Blaines  College.  In  all  his  wide  circle  of  friends,  he  knew 


188  QUEED 

no  one  who  made  so  sympathetic  and  intelligent  a  listener 
as  she.  He  talked  freely,  lengthily,  even  egotistically  it 
might  have  seemed,  had  they  not  been  such  good  friends  and 
he  so  sure  of  her  interest.  Difficulties,  it  seemed,  had  already 
cropped  out.  He  was  not  sure  of  the  temper  of  his  trustees, 
whom  he  had  called  together  for  an  informal  meeting  that 
morning.  Starting  to  advertise  the  great  improvements  that 
had  taken  place  in  the  college,  he  had  collided  with  the 
simple  fact  that  no  improvements  had  taken  place.  Even  if 
he  privately  regarded  his  own  accession  in  that  light,  he 
humorously  pointed  out,  he  could  hardly  advertise  it,  with 
old  Dr.  Gilfillan,  the  retired  president,  living  around  the 
corner  and  reading  the  papers.  Again,  taking  his  pencil  to 
make  a  list  of  the  special  advantages  Blaines  had  to  offer, 
he  was  rather  forcibly  struck  with  the  fact  that  it  had  no 
special  advantages.  But  upon  these  and  other  difficulties, 
he  touched  optimistically,  as  though  confident  that  under 
the  right  treatment,  namely  his  treatment,  all  would  soon 
yield. 

Sharlee,  fired  by  his  gay  confidence,  mused  enthusias 
tically.  "It's  inspiring  to  think  what  can  be  done!  Really, 
it  is  no  empty  dream  that  the  number  of  students  might 
be  doubled  —  quadrupled  —  in  five  years." 

"Do  you  know,"  said  he,  turning  his  glowing  face  upon 
her,  "  I  'm  not  so  eager  for  mere  numbers  now.  That  is  one 
point  on  which  my  views  have  shifted  during  my  studies 
this  summer.  My  ideal  is  no  longer  a  very  large  college  — 
at  least  not  necessarily  large  —  but  a  college  of  the  very 
highest  standards.  A  distinguished  faculty  of  recognized 
authorities  in  their  several  lines;  an  earnest  student  body, 
large  if  you  can  get  them,  but  always  made  of  picked  men 
admitted  on  the  strictest  terms ;  degrees  recognized  all  over 
the  country  as  an  unvarying  badge  of  the  highest  scholar 
ship  —  these  are  what  I  shall  strive  for.  My  ultimate 
ambition,"  said  Charles  Gardiner  West,  dreamily,  "is  to 
make  of  Blaines  College  an  institution  like  the  University 
of  Paris." 


QUEED  189 

He  sprang  up  presently  with  great  contrition,  part  real, 
part  mock,  over  having  absorbed  so  much  of  the  honest 
tax-payer's  property,  the  Departmental  time.  No,  he  could 
not  be  induced  to  appropriate  a  moment  more;  he  was  going 
to  run  on  up  the  street  and  call  on  Colonel  Cowles. 

"How  is  the  old  gentleman,  anyway?" 

"His  spirits,"  said  Sharlee,  "were  never  better,  and  he  is 
working  like  a  horse.  But  I  'm  afraid  the  dear  is  beginning 
to  feel  his  years  a  little." 

"He's  nearly  seventy,  you  know.  By  the  bye,  what  ever 
became  of  that  young  helper  you  and  I  unloaded  on  him 
last  year  —  the  queer  little  man  with  the  queer  little  name?" 

Sharlee  saw  that  President  West  had  entirely  forgotten 
their  conversation  six  months  before,  when  he  had  promised 
to  protect  this  same  young  helper  from  Colonel  Cowles  and 
the  Post  directors.  She  smiled  indulgently  at  this  evidence 
of  the  absent-mindedness  of  the  great. 

"  Became  of  him !  Why,  you  're  going  to  make  him  regular 
assistant  editor  at  your  directors'  meeting  next  month." 

"Are  we,  though!  I  had  it  in  the  back  of  my  head  that 
he  was  fired  early  in  the  summer." 

"Well,  you  see,  when  he  saw  the  axe  descending,  he  pulled 
off  a  little  revolution  all  by  himself  and  all  of  a  sudden 
learned  to  write.  Make  the  Colonel  tell  you  about  it." 

"  I  'm  not  surprised,"  said  West.  "  I  told  you  last  winter, 
you  know,  that  I  believed  in  that  boy.  Great  heavens !  It 's 
glorious  to  be  back  in  this  old  town  again!" 

He  went  down  the  broad  steps  of  the  Capitol,  and  out 
the  winding  white  walkway  through  the  park.  Nearly 
everybody  he  met  stopped  him  with  a  friendly  greeting  and  a 
welcome  home.  He  walked  the  shady  path  with  his  light 
stick  swinging,  his  eyes  seeing,  not  an  arch  of  tangible  trees, 
but  the  shining  vista  which  dreamers  call  the  Future.  .  .  . 
He  stood  upon  a  platform,  fronting  a  vast  white  meadow 
of  upturned  faces.  He  was  speaking  to  this  meadow,  his 
theme  being  "Education  and  the  Rise  of  the  Masses,"  and 
the  people,  displaying  an  enthusiasm  rare  at  lectures  upon 


190  QUEED 

such  topics,  roared  their  approval  as  he  shot  at  them  great 
terse  truths,  the  essence  of  wide  reading  and  profound  wis 
dom  put  up  in  pellets  of  pungent  epigram.  He  rose  at  a  long 
dinner-table,  so  placed  that  as  he  stood  his  eye  swept  down 
rows  upon  rows  of  other  long  tables,  where  the  diners  had 
all  pushed  back  their  chairs  to  turn  and  look  at  him.  His 
words  were  honeyed,  of  a  magic  compelling  power,  so  that 
as  he  reached  his  peroration,  aged  magnates  could  not  be 
restrained  from  producing  fountain-pen  and  check-book; 
he  saw  them  pushing  aside  coffee-cups  to  indite  rows  of  o's 
of  staggering  length.  Blaines  College  now  tenanted  a  new 
home  on  a  grassy  knoll  outside  the  city.  The  single  ram 
shackle  barn  which  had  housed  the  institution  prior  to  the 
coming  6f  President  West  was  replaced  by  a  cluster  of  noble 
edifices  of  classic  marble.  The  president  sat  in  his  handsome 
office,  giving  an  audience  to  a  delegation  of  world-famous 
professors  from  the  University  of  Paris.  They  had  been 
dispatched  by  the  French  nation  to  study  his  methods  on 
the  ground. 

"Why,  hello,  Colonel!  Bless  your  heart,  I  am  glad  to  see 
you,  sir.  .  .  ." 

Colonel  Cowles,  looking  up  from  his  ancient  seat,  gave 
an  exclamation  of  surprise  and  pleasure.  He  welcomed  the 
young  man  affectionately.  West  sat  down,  and  once  more 
pen-sketched  his  travels  and  his  plans  for  Blaines  College. 
He  was  making  a  second,  or  miniature,  grand  tour  that 
afternoon,  regreeting  all  his  friends,  and  was  thus  com 
pelled  to  tell  his  story  many  times ;  but  his  own  interest  in 
it  appeared  ever  fresh.  For  Blaines  he  asked  and  was 
promised  the  kindly  offices  of  the  Post. 

The  Colonel,  in  his  turn,  gave  a  brief  account  of  his 
vacationless  summer,  of  his  daily  work,  of  the  progress  of 
the  Post's  Policies. 

"  I  hear,"  said  West,  "  that  that  little  scientist  I  made  you 
a  present  of  last  year  has  made  a  ten-strike." 

"Queed?  An  extraordinary  thing,"  said  the  Colonel, 
relighting  his  cigar.  "  I  was  on  the  point  of  discharging  him, 


QUEED  191 

you  remember,  with  the  hearty  approval  of  the  directors. 
His  stuff  was  dismal,  abysmal,  and  hopeless.  One  day  he 
turned  around  and  began  handing  in  stuff  of  a  totally  dif 
ferent  kind.  First-rate,  some  of  it.  I  thought  at  first  that 
he  must  be  hiring  somebody  to  do  it  for  him.  Did  you  see 
the  paper  while  you  were  away?" 

"Very  irregularly,  I'm  sorry  to  say.'* 

"Quite  on  his  own  hook,  the  boy  turned  up  one  day  with 
an  article  on  the  Centre  Street  'mashers'  that  was  a 
screamer.  You  know  what  that  situation  was  — " 

"Yes,  yes." 

"I  had  for  some  time  had  it  in  mind  to  tackle  it  myself. 
The  fact  was  that  we  were  developing  a  class  of  boy 
Don  Juans  that  were  a  black  disgrace  to  the  city.  It  was 
a  rather  unpleasant  subject,  but  this  young  man  handled 
it  with  much  tact,  as  well  as  with  surprising  vigor  and  abil> 
ity.  His  improvement  seemed  to  date  from  right  there. 
I  encouraged  him  to  follow  up  his  first  effort,  and  he  wrote 
a  strong  series  which  attracted  attention  all  through  the 
State,  and  has  already  brought  about  decided  improvement." 

"Splendid!  You  know,"  said  West,  "the  first  time  I 
ever  looked  at  that  boy,  I  was  sure  he  had  the  stuff  in  him." 

"Then  you  are  a  far  keener  observer  than  I.  However, 
the  nature  of  the  man  seems  to  be  undergoing  some  subtle 
change,  a  curious  kind  of  expansion  —  I  don't  remember 
anything  like  it  in  my  experience.  A  more  indefatigable 
worker  I  never  saw,  and  if  he  goes  on  this  way  .  .  .  Well, 
God  moves  in  a  mysterious  way.  It's  a  delight  to  see  you 
again,  Gardiner.  Take  supper  with  me  at  the  club,  won't 
you?  I  feel  lonely  and  grown  old,  as  the  poet  says." 

West  accepted,  and  presently  departed  on  his  happy 
round.  The  Colonel  glanced  at  his  watch;  it  was  3.30 
o'clock,  and  he  fell  industriously  to  work  again.  On  the 
stroke  of  four,  as  usual,  the  door  of  the  adjoining  office 
opened,  and  he  heard  his  assistant  enter  and  seat  himself 
at  the  new  desk  recently  provided  for  him.  Another  half- 
hour  passed,  and  the  Colonel,  putting  a  double  cross-mark 


192  QUEED 

at   the  bottom  of  his  paper  —  that  being  how   you  write 
"Finis"  on  the  press — raised  his  head. 

"Mr.Queed." 

"Yes." 

The  connecting  door  opened,  and  the  young  man  walked 
in.  His  chief  eyed  him  thoughtfully. 

"Young  man,  you  have  picked  up  a  complexion  like  a 
professional  beauty's.  What  is  your  secret?" 

"I  daresay  it  is  exercise.  I  have  just  walked  out  to 
Kern's  Castle  and  back." 

"H'm.   Five  miles  if  it's  a  step." 

"And  a  half.  I  do  it  —  twice  a  week  —  in  an  hour  and 
seven  minutes." 

The  Colonel  thought  of  his  own  over-rubicund  cheek  and 
sighed.  "Well,  whom  or  what  do  you  wish  to  crucify  to 
morrow?" 

"I  am  at  your  orders  there." 

"Have  you  examined  Deputy  Clerk  Folsom's  reply  to 
Councilman  Hannigan's  charge?  What  do  you  think  of  it?" 

"I  think  it  puts  Hannigan  in  a  very  awkward  position." 

"  I  agree  with  you.  Suppose  you  seek  to  show  that  to  the 
city  in  half  a  column." 

Queed  bowed.  "I  may,  perhaps,  remind  you,  Colonel, 
of  the  meeting  in  New  York  to-morrow  to  prepare  for  the 
celebration  of  the  Darwin  centennial.  If  you  desired  I 
should  be  glad  to  prepare,  apropos  of  this,  a  brief  mono 
graph  telling  in  a  light,  popular  way  what  Darwin  did  for 
the  world." 

"And  what  did  Darwin  do  for  the  world?" 

The  grave  young  man  made  a  large  grave  gesture  which 
indicated  the  immensity  of  Darwin's  doings  for  the  world. 

"Which  topic  do  you  prefer  to  handle — Folsom  on 
Hannigan,  or  what  Darwin  did  for  the  world?" 

"I  think,"  said  Queed,  "that  I  should  prefer  to  handle 
both." 

"Ten  people  will  read  Hannigan  to  one  who  reads  Dar 
win." 


QUEED  193 

"Don't  you  think  that  it  is  the  Post's  business  to  reduce 
that  proportion?" 

"Take  them  both,"  said  the  Colonel  presently.  "But 
always  remember  this:  the  great  People  are  more  inter* 
ested  in  a  cat-fight  at  the  corner  of  Seventh  and  Centre 
Streets  than  they  are  in  the  greatest  exploit  of  the  greatest 
scientific  theorist  that  ever  lived." 

"I  will  remember  what  you  say,  Colonel." 

"I  want  you,"  resumed  Colonel  Cowles,  "to  take  supper 
with  me  at  the  club.  Not  to-night — I'm  engaged.  Shall 
we  say  to-morrow  night,  at  seven?" 

Queed  accepted  without  perceptible  hesitation.  Some 
time  had  passed  since  he  became  aware  that  the  Colonel 
had  somehow  insinuated  himself  into  that  list  of  friends 
which  had  halted  so  long  at  Tim  and  Murphy  Queed.  Be 
sides,  he  had  a  genuine,  unscientific  desire  to  see  what  a  real 
club  looked  like  inside.  So  far,  his  knowledge  of  clubs  was 
absolutely  confined  to  the  Mercury  Athletic  Association, 
B.  Klinker,  President. 

The  months  of  May,  June,  July,  and  August  had  risen 
and  died  since  Queed,  threshing  out  great  questions  through 
the  still  watches  of  the  night,  had  resolved  to  give  a  modified 
scheme  of  life  a  tentative  and  experimental  trial.  He  had 
kept  this  resolution,  according  to  his  wont.  Probably  his 
first  liking  for  Colonel  Cowles  dated  back  to  the  very  begin 
ning  of  this  period.  It  might  be  traced  to  the  day  when 
the  precariously-placed  assistant  had  submitted  his  initial 
article  on  the  thesis  his  friend  Buck  had  given  him  —  the 
first  article  in  all  his  life  that  the  little  Doctor  had  ever 
dipped  warm  out  of  human  life.  This  momentous  composi 
tion  he  had  brought  and  laid  upon  the  Colonel's  desk,  as 
usual ;  but  he  did  not  follow  his  ancient  custom  by  instantly 
vanishing  toward  the  Scriptorium.  Instead  he  stuck  fast  in 
the  sanctum,  not  pretending  to  look  at  an  encyclopedia  or 
out  of  the  window  as  another  man  might  have  done,  but 
standing  rigid  on  the  other  side  of  the  table,  gaze  glued  upon 
the  perusing  Colonel.  Presently  the  old  editor  looked  up. 


194  QUEED 

"Did  you  write  this?" 

"Yes.   Why  not?" 

"It's  about  as  much  like  your  usual  style  as  my  style  is 
like  Henry  James's." 

"You  don't  consider  it  a  good  editorial,  then?" 

"You  have  not  necessarily  drawn  the  correct  inference 
from  my  remark.  I  consider  it  an  excellent  editorial.  In 
fact  —  I  shall  make  it  my  leader  to-morrow  morning.  But 
that  has  nothing  to  do  with  how  you  happen  to  be  using  a 
style  exactly  the  reverse  of  your  own." 

Queed  had  heaved  a  great  sigh.  The  article  occupied  three 
pages  of  copy-paper  in  a  close  handwriting,  and  repre 
sented  sixteen  hours'  work.  Its  author  had  rewritten  it 
eleven  times,  incessantly  referring  to  his  text-book,  the  files 
of  the  Post,  and  subjecting  each  phrase  to  the  most  gruelling 
examination  before  finally  admitting  it  to  the  perfect 
structure.  However,  it  seemed  no  use  to  bore  one's  employer 
with  details  such  as  these. 

"  I  have  been  doing  a  little  studying  of  late  — " 

"Under  excellent  masters,  it  seems.  Now  this  phrase, 
'the  ultimate  reproach  and  the  final  infamy'"  —  the 
Colonel  unconsciously  smacked  his  lips  over  it  —  "why, 
sir,  it  sounds  like  one  of  my  own." 

Queed  started. 

"If  you  must  know,  it  is  one  of  your  own.  You  used  it 
on  October  26,  1900,  during,  as  you  will  recall,  the  closing 
days  of  the  presidential  campaign." 

The  Colonel  stared  at  him,  bewildered. 

"I  decided  to  learn  editorial-writing  —  as  the  term  is 
understood,"  Queed  reluctantly  explained.  "Therefore,  I 
have  been  sitting  up  till  two  o'clock  in  the  mornings,  study 
ing  the  files  of  the  Post,  to  see  exactly  how  you  did  it." 

The  Colonel 's  gaze  gradually  softened.  "You  might  have 
been  worse  employed;  I  compliment  and  congratulate  you," 
said  he;  and  then  added:  "Whether  you  have  really  caught 
the  idea  and  mastered  the  technique  or  not,  it  is  too  soon 
to  say.  But  I  '11  say  frankly  that  this  article  is  worth  more 


QUEED  i$5 

to  me  than  everything  else  that  you've  written  for  the  Post 
put  together." 

"  I  am  —  ahem  —  gratified  that  you  are  pleased  with  it." 

The  Colonel,  whose  glance  had  gone  out  of  the  window, 
swung  around  in  his  chair  and  smote  the  table  a  testy  blow. 

"For  the  Lord's  sake,"  he  exploded,  "get  some  heat  in 
you !  Squirt  some  color  into  your  way  of  looking  at  things ! 
Be  kind  and  good-natured  in  your  heart  —  just  as  I  am  at 
this  moment  —  but  for  heaven's  sake  learn  to  write  as  if 
you  were  mad,  and  only  kept  from  yelling  by  phenomenal 
will-power." 

This  was  in  early  May.  Many  other  talks  upon  the  art 
of  editorial  writing  did  the  two  have,  as  the  days  went.  The 
Colonel,  mystified  but  pleased  by  revelations  of  actuality 
and  life  in  his  heretofore  too-embalmed  assistant,  found  an 
increasing  interest  in  developing  him.  Here  was  a  youth, 
with  the  qualities  of  potential  great  valuableness,  and  the 
wise  editor,  as  soon  as  this  appeared,  gave  him  his  chance  by 
calling  him  off  the  fields  of  taxation  and  currency  and 
assigning  him  to  topics  plucked  alive  from  the  day's  news. 

On  the  fatal  I5th  of  May,  the  Colonel  told  Queed  merely 
that  the  Post  desired  his  work  as  long  as  it  showed  such 
promise  as  it  now  showed.  That  was  all  the  talk  about  the 
dismissal  that  ever  took  place  between  them.  The  Colonel 
was  no  believer  in  fulsome  praise  for  the  young.  But  to 
others  he  talked  more  freely,  and  this  was  how  it  happened 
that  the  daughter  of  his  old  friend  John  Randolph  Weyland 
knew  that  Mr.  Queed  was  slated  for  an  early  march  up 
stairs. 

For  Queed  the  summer  had  been  a  swift  and  immensely 
busy  one.  To  write  editorials  that  have  a  relation  with 
everyday  life,  it  gradually  became  clear  to  him  that  the 
writer  must  himself  have  some  such  relation.  In  June  the 
Mercury  Athletic  Association  had  been  thoroughly  re 
organized  and  rejuvenated,  and  regular  meets  were  held 
every  Saturday  night.  At  Trainer  Klinker's  command, 
Queed  had  resolutely  permitted  himself  to  be  inducted  into 


196  QUEED 

the  Mercury;  moreover,  he  made  it  a  point  of  honor  to  at 
tend  the  Saturday  night  functions,  where  he  had  the  ideal 
chance  to  match  his  physical  competence  against  that  of 
other  men.  Early  in  the  sessions  at  the  gymnasium,  Buck 
had  introduced  his  pupil  to  boxing-glove  and  punching-bag, 
his  own  special  passions,  and  now  his  orders  ran  that  the 
Doc  should  put  on  the  gloves  with  any  of  the  Mercuries  that 
were  willing.  Most  of  the  Mercuries  were  willing,  and  on 
these  early  Saturday  nights,  Stark's  rocked  with  the  falls 
of  Dr.  Queed.  But  under  Klinker's  stern  discipline,  he 
was  already  acquiring  something  like  a  form.  By  midsum 
mer  he  had  gained  a  small  reputation  for  scientific  precision 
buttressed  by  invincible  inability  to  learn  when  he  was 
licked,  and  autumn  found  many  of  the  Mercuries  decidedly 
less  Barkis-like  than  of  old. 

Queed  lived  now  in  the  glow  of  perfect  physical  health, 
a  very  different  thing,  as  Fifi  had  once  pointed  out,  from 
merely  not  feeling  sick.  In  the  remarkable  development  that 
his  body  was  undergoing,  he  had  found  an  unexpected 
pride.  But  the  Mercury,  though  he  hardly  realized  it  at 
the  time,  was  useful  to  him  in  a  bigger  way  than  bodily 
improvement. 

Here  he  met  young  men  who  were  most  emphatically  in 
touch  with  life.  They  treated  him  as  an  equal  with  refer 
ence  to  his  waxing  muscular  efficiency,  and  with  some 
respect  as  regards  his  journalistic  connection.  "Want  you 
to  shake  hands  with  the  editor  of  the  Post"  so  kindly  Buck 
would  introduce  him.  After  the  bouts  or  the  "exhibition" 
of  a  Saturday,  there  was  always  a  smoker,  and  in  the  highly 
instructed  and  expert  talk  of  his  club-mates  the  Doctor 
learned  many  things  that  were  to  be  of  value  to  him  later 
on.  Some  of  the  Mercuries,  besides  their  picturesque  gen 
eral  knowledge,  knew  much  more  about  city  politics  than 
ever  got  into  the  papers.  There  was  Jimmy  Wattrous,  for 
example,  already  rising  into  fame  as  Plonny  Neal's  most 
promising  lieutenant.  Jimmy  bared  his  heart  with  the 
Mercuries,  and  was  particularly  friendly  with  the  representa- 


QUEED  197 

tive  of  the  great  power  which  moulds  public  opinion.  Now 
and  then,  Neal  himself  looked  in,  Plonny,  the  great  boss, 
who  was  said  to  hold  the  city  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand. 
Many  an  editorial  that  surprised  and  pleased  Colonel 
Cowles  was  born  in  that  square  room  back  of  Stark's. 

And  all  these  things  took  time  .  .  .  took  time  .  .  .  And 
there  were  nights  when  Queed  woke  wide-eyed  with  cold 
sweat  on  his  brow  and  the  cold  fear  in  his  heart  that  he 
and  posterity  were  being  cheated,  that  he  was  making  an 
irretrievable  and  ghastly  blunder. 

Desperate  months  were  May,  June,  and  July  for  the  little 
Doctor.  In  all  this  time  he  never  once  put  his  own  pencil 
to  his  own  paper.  Manuscript  and  Schedule  lay  locked 
together  in  a  drawer,  toward  which  he  could  never  bear  to 
glance.  Thirteen  hours  a  day  he  gave  to  the  science  of 
editorial  writing ;  two  hours  a  day  to  the  science  of  physcial 
culture;  one  hour  a  day  (computed  average)  to  the  science 
of  Human  Intercourse ;  but  to  the  Science  of  Sciences  never 
an  hour  on  never  a  day.  The  rest  was  food  and  sleep.  Such 
was  his  life  for  three  months ;  a  life  that  would  have  been 
too  horrible  to  contemplate,  had  it  not  been  that  in  all  of 
his  new  sciences  he  uncovered  a  growing  personal  interest 
which  kept  him  constantly  astonished  at  himself. 

By  the  end  of  June  he  found  it  safe  to  give  less  and  less 
time  to  the  study  of  editorial  paradigms,  for  he  had  the 
technique  at  his  fingers'  ends ;  and  so  he  gave  more  and  more 
time  to  the  amassment  of  material.  For  he  had  made  a  mag 
nificent  boast,  and  he  never  had  much  idea  of  permitting  it 
to  turn  out  empty,  for  all  his  nights  of  torturing  misgivings. 
He  read  enormously  with  expert  facility  and  a  beautifully 
trained  memory;  read  history,  biography,  memoirs,  war 
records,  old  newspapers,  old  speeches,  councilmanic  pro 
ceedings,  departmental  reports  —  everything  he  could  lay 
his  hands  on  that  promised  capital  for  an  editorial  writer  in 
that  city  and  that  State.  By  the  end  of  July  he  felt  that 
he  could  slacken  up  here,  too,  having  pretty  well  exhausted 
the  field,  and  the  first  day  of  August  —  red-letter  day  in 


198  QUEED 

the  annals  of  science  —  saw  him  unlock  the  sacred  drawer 
with  a  close-set  face.  And  now  the  Schedule,  so  long  lapsed, 
was  reinstated,  with  Four  Hours  a  Day  segregated  to  Mag 
num  Opus.  A  pitiful  little  step  at  reconstruction,  perhaps, 
but  still  a  step.  And  henceforth  every  evening,  between 
9.30  and  1.30,  Dr.  Queed  sat  alone  in  his  Scriptorium  and 
embraced  his  love. 

Insensibly  summer  faded  into  autumn,  and  still  the  science 
of  Human  Intercourse  was  faithfully  practiced.  The  Payn- 
ter  parlor  knew  Queed  not  infrequently  in  these  days,  where 
he  could  sometimes'be  discovered  not  merely  suffering,  but 
encouraging,  Major  Brooke  to  talk  to  him  of  his  victories 
over  the  Republicans  in  1870-75.  Nor  was  he  a  stranger 
to  Nicolovius's  sitting-room,  having  made  it  an  iron-clad 
rule  with  himself  to  accept  one  out  of  every  two  invitations 
to  that  charming  cloister.  After  all,  there  might  be  some 
thing  to  learn  from  both  the  Major's  fiery  reminiscences 
and  the  old  professor's  cultured  talk.  He  himself,  he  found, 
tended  naturally  toward  silence.  Listeners  appeared  to  be 
needed  in  a  world  where  the  supply  of  talkers  exceeded  the 
demand.  The  telling  of  humorous  anecdote  he  had  definitely 
excided  from  his  creed.  It  did  not  appear  needed  of  him ;  and 
he  was  sure  that  the  author  of  his  creed  would  herself  have 
authorized  him  to  drop  it.  He  never  missed  Fifi  now,  ac 
cording  to  the  way  of  this  world,  but  he  thought  of  her 
sometimes,  which  is  all  that  anybody  has  a  right  to  expect. 
Miss  Weyland  he  had  not  seen  since  the  day  Fifi  died.  Mrs. 
Paynter  had  been  away  all  summer,  a  firm  spinster  cousin 
coming  in  from  the  country  to  run  the  boarders,  and  the 
landlady's  agent  came  to  the  house  no  more.  Buck  Klinker 
he  saw  incessantly;  he  was  the  first  person  in  the  world, 
probably,  that  the  little  Doctor  had  ever  really  liked.  It 
was  Buck  who  suggested  to  his  pupil,  in  October,  a  par 
ticularly  novel  experience  for  his  soul's  unfolding,  which 
Queed,  though  failing  to  adopt  it,  sometimes  dandled  before 
his  mind's  eye  with  a  kind  of  horrified  fascination,  viz:  the 
taking  of  Miss  Miller  to  the  picture  shows. 


QUEED  199 

But  the  bulk  of  his  time  this  autumn  was  still  going  to  his 
work  on  the  Post.  With  ever  fresh  wonderment,  he  faced 
the  fact  that  this  work,  first  taken  up  solely  to  finance  the 
Scriptorium,  and  next  enlarged  to  satisfy  a  most  irrational 
instinct,  was  growing  slowly  but  surely  upon  his  personal 
interest.  Certainly  the  application  of  a  new  science  to  a 
new  set  of  practical  conditions  was  stimulating  to  his  intel 
lect;  the  panorama  of  problems  whipped  out  daily  by  the 
telegraph  had  a  warmth  and  immediateness  wanting  to  the 
abstractions  of  closet  philosophy.  Queed's  articles  lacked 
the  Colonel's  expert  fluency,  his  loose  but  telling  vividness, 
his  faculty  for  broad  satire  which  occasionally  set  the  whole 
city  laughing.  On  the  other  hand,  they  displayed  an  exact 
knowledge  of  fact,  a  breadth  of  study  and  outlook,  and  a 
habit  of  plumbing  bottom  on  any  and  all  subjects  which 
critical  minds  found  wanting  in  the  Colonel's  delightful 
discourses.  And  nowadays  the  young  man's  articles  were 
constantly  reaching  a  higher  and  higher  level  of  readability. 
Not  infrequently  they  attracted  public  comment,  not  only, 
indeed  not  oftenest,  inside  the  State.  Queed  knew  what  it 
was  to  be  quoted  in  that  identical  New  York  newspaper  from 
whose  pages,  so  popular  for  wrapping  around  pork  chops, 
he  had  first  picked  out  his  letters. 

Of  these  things  the  honorable  Post  directors  were  not  un 
mindful.  They  met  on  October  10,  and  upon  Colonel 
Cowles's  cordial  recommendation,  named  Mr.  Queed  as 
sistant  editor  of  the  Post  at  a  salary  of  fifteen  hundred  dol 
lars  per  annum.  And  Mr.  Queed  accepted  the  appointment 
without  a  moment's  hesitation. 

So  far,  then,  the  magnificent  boast  had  been  made  good. 
The  event  fell  on  a  Saturday.  The  Sunday  was  sunny, 
windy,  and  crisp.  Free  for  the  day  and  regardful  of  the  ad 
vantages  of  open-air  pedestrianism,  the  new  assistant  editor 
put  on  his  hat  from  the  dinner-table  and  struck  for  the  open 
country.  He  rambled  far,  over  trails  strange  to  him,  and 
came  up  short,  about  4.30  in  the  afternoon,  in  a  grove  of 
immemorial  pines  which  he  instantly  remembered  to  have 
seen  before. 


XVII 

A  Remeeting  in  a  Cemetery :  the  Unglassed  Queed  who  loafed 
on  Rustic  Bridges  ;  of  the  Consequences  of  failing  to  tell  a 
Lady  that  you  hope  to  see  her  again  soon. 

FIFI'S  grave  had  long  since  lost  its  first  terrible  look  of 
bare  newness.  Grass  grew  upon  it  in  familiar  ways. 
Rose-bushes  that  might  have  stood  a  lifetime  nodded 
over  it  by  night  and  by  day.  Already  "the  minute  grey 
lichens,  plate  o'er  plate,"  were  "softening  down  the  crisp-cut 
name  and  date  " ;  and  the  winds  of  winter  and  of  summer  blew 
over  a  little  mound  that  had  made  itself  at  home  in  the 
still  city  of  the  dead. 

Green  was  the  turf  above  Fifi,  sweet  the  peacefulness  of 
her  little  churchyard.  Her  cousin  Sharlee,  who  had  loved 
her  well,  disposed  her  flowers  tenderly,  and  stood  awhile  in 
reverie  of  the  sort  which  the  surroundings  so  irresistibly 
invited.  But  the  schedules  of  even  electric  car-lines  are  in 
exorable;  and  presently  she  saw  from  a  glance  at  her  watch 
that  she  must  turn  her  face  back  to  the  city  of  the  living. 

On  the  little  rustic  bridge  a  hundred  yards  away,  a  man 
was  standing,  with  rather  the  look  of  having  stopped  at  just 
that  minute.  From  a  distance  Sharlee's  glance  swept  him 
lightly ;  she  saw  that  she  did  not  know  him ;  and  not  fancy 
ing  his  frank  stare,  she  drew  near  and  stepped  upon  the 
bridge  with  a  splendid  unconsciousness  of  his  presence.  But 
just  when  she  was  safely  by,  her  ears  were  astonished  by 
his  voice  speaking  her  name. 

"How  do  you  do,  Miss  Weyland?" 

She  turned,  surprised  by  a  familiar  note  in  the  deep  tones> 
looked,  and  —  yes,  there  could  be  no  doubt  of  it  —  it  was  — 

"Mr.  Queed!  Why,  how  do  you  do!" 

They  shook  hands.    He  removed  his  hat  for  the  process, 


QUEED  201 

doing  it  with  a  certain  painstaking  precision  which  betrayed 
want  of  familiarity  with  the  engaging  rite. 

"  I  have  n't  seen  you  for  a  long  time,"  said  Sharlee  brightly. 

The  dear,  old  remark  —  the  moss-covered  remark  that 
hung  in  the  well!  How  on  earth  could  we  live  without 
it?  In  behalf  of  Sharlee,  however,  some  excuses  can  be 
urged;  for,  remembering  the  way  she  had  talked  to  Mr. 
Queed  once  on  the  general  subject  of  failures,  she  found 
herself  struggling  against  a  most  absurd  sense  of  embarrass 
ment. 

"No,"  replied  Queed,  replacing  his  hat  as  though  follow 
ing  from  memory  the  diagram  in  a  book  of  etiquette.  He 
added,  borrowing  one  of  the  Colonel's  favorite  expressions, 
"I  hope  you  are  very  well." 

"Yes,  indeed.  .  .  .  I'm  so  glad  you  spoke  to  me,  for  to 
tell  you  the  truth,  I  never,  never  should  have  known  you  if 
you  had  n't." 

"You  think  that  I've  changed?  Well,"  said  he,  gravely, 
"I  ought  to  have.  You  might  say  that  I've  given  five 
months  to  it." 

"You've  changed  enormously." 

She  examined  with  interest  this  new  Mr.  Queed  who  loafed 
on  rustic  bridges,  five  miles  from  a  Sociology,  and  hailed 
passing  ladies  on  his  own  motion.  He  appeared,  indeed, 
decidedly  altered. 

In  the  first  place,  he  looked  decidedly  bigger,  and,  to  come 
at  once  to  the  fact,  he  was.  For  Klinker's  marvelous  exer 
cises  for  all  parts  of  the  body  had  done  more  than  add  nine 
teen  pounds  to  his  weight,  and  deepen  his  chest,  and  broaden 
his  shoulders.  They  had  pulled  and  tugged  at  the  undevel 
oped  tissues  until  they  had  actually  added  a  hard-won 
three-quarters  of  an  inch  to  his  height.  The  stoop  was  gone, 
and  instead  of  appearing  rather  a  small  man,  Mr.  Queed 
now  looked  full  middle-height  or  above.  He  wore  a  well- 
made  suit  of  dark  blue,  topped  by  a  correct  derby.  His  hair 
was  cut  trim,  his  color  was  excellent,  and,  last  miracle  of  all, 
he  wore  no  spectacles.  It  was  astonishing  but  true.  The 


202  QUEED 

beautiful  absence  of  these  round  disfigurements  brought 
into  new  prominence  a  pair  of  grayish  eyes  which  did  not 
look  so  very  professorial,  after  all. 

But  what  Sharlee  liked  best  about  this  unglassed  and 
unscienced  Mr.  Queed  was  his  entire  absence  of  any  self- 
consciousness  in  regard  to  her.  When  he  told  her  that  Easter 
Monday  night  that  he  cheerfully  took  his  turn  on  the  psy 
chological  opera  ting- table,  anaesthetics  barred,  and  no  mercy 
asked  or  given,  it  appeared  that  he,  alone  among  men, 
really  meant  it. 

Under  the  tiny  bridge,  a  correspondingly  tiny  brook 
purled  without  surcease,  its  heart  set  upon  somewhere  find 
ing  the  sea.  Over  their  heads  a  glorious  maple  was  taking  off 
its  coat  of  many  colors  in  the  wind.  Sharlee  put  back  a  small 
hand  into  a  large  muff  and  said :  — 

"At  church  this  morning  I  saw  Colonel  Cowles.  He 
told  me  about  you.  I  don't  know  how  you  look  at  it,  but 
I  think  you're  a  subject  for  the  heartiest  congratulations. 
So  here  are  mine." 

"The  men  at  the  Mercury  were  pleased,  too,"  mused  Mr. 
Queed,  looking  out  over  the  landscape.  "Do  you  ever  read 
my  articles  now?" 

"For  many  years,"  said  Sharlee,  evasively,  "I  have  al 
ways  read  the  Post  from  cover  to  cover.  It 's  been  to  me  like 
those  books  you  see  in  the  advertisements  and  nowhere  else. 
Grips  the  reader  from  the  start,  and  she  cannot  lay  it  down 
till  the  last  page  is  turned." 

A  brief  smile  appeared  in  the  undisguised  eyes.  "  Do  you 
notice  any  distinctions  now  between  me  and  the  Encyclo 
pedia  Britannica?" 

"Unless  you  happen  to  refer  to  Lombroso  or  Buckle  or 
Aristotle  or  Plato,"  said  Sharlee,  not  noticing  the  smile,  "I 
never  know  whether  it's  your  article  or  Colonel  Cowles's. 
Do  you  mind  walking  on?  It's  nearly  time  for  my  car." 

"A  year  ago,"  said  he,  "I  certainly  should  not  have 
liked  that.  I  do  now,  since  it  means  that  I  have  succeeded 
in  what  I  set  out  to  do.  I  've  thought  a  good  deal  about 


QUEED  203 

that  tired  bricklayer  this  summer,"  he  went  on,  quite  un 
embarrassed.  "By  the  way,  I  know  one  personally  now: 
Timrod  Burns,  of  the  Mercury.  Only  I  can't  say  that  I 
ever  saw  Timmy  tired." 

Down  the  woodland  path  they  passed  side  by  side,  headed 
for  the  little  station  known  as  Stop  1 1 .  Sharlee  was  pleased 
that  he  had  remembered  about  the  bricklayer;  she  could 
have  been  persuaded  that  his  remark  was  vaguely  intended 
to  convey  some  sort  of  thanks  to  her.  But  saying  no  more 
of  this,  she  made  it  possible  to  introduce  casually  a  reference 
to  his  vanished  glasses. 

"  Yes,"  said  he,  "I  knocked  them  off  the  bureau  and  broke 
them  one  day.  So  I  just  let  them  go.  They  were  rather 
striking-looking  glasses,  I  always  thought.  I  don't  believe 
I  ever  saw  another  pair  quite  like  them." 

"  But,"  said  Sharlee,  puzzled,  "do  you  find  that  you  can  see 
perfectly  well  without  them?" 

"  Oh,  yes ;  if  anything,  better."  He  paused,  and  added  with 
entire  seriousness:  "You  see  those  spectacles,  striking- 
looking  as  they  were,  were  only  window-glass.  I  bought 
them  at  a  ten-cent  store  on  Sixth  Avenue  when  I  was 
twelve  years  old." 

"Oh!   What  made  you  do  that?" 

"All  the  regulars  at  the  Astor  Library  wore  them.  At  the 
time  it  seemed  to  be  the  thing  to  do,  and  of  course  they 
soon  became  second  nature  to  me.  But  I  daresay  no  one 
ever  had  a  sounder  pair  of  eyes  than  I." 

To  Sharlee  this  seemed  one  of  the  most  pathetic  of  all  his 
confidences;  she  offered  no  comment. 

"You  were  in  the  churchyard,"  stated  Mr.  Queed.  "I 
was  there  just  ahead  of  you.  I  was  struck  with  that  motto 
or  text  on  the  headstone,  and  shall  look  it  up  when  I  get 
home.  I  have  been  making  a  more  careful  study  of  your  Bible 
this  autumn  and  have  found  it  exceptionally  interesting. 
You,  I  suppose,  subscribe  to  all  the  tenets  of  the  Christian 
faith?" 

Sharlee  hesitated.    " I'm  not  sure  that  I  can  answer  that 


204  QUEED 

with  a  direct  yes,  and  I  will  not  answer  it  with  any  sort  oi 
no.  So  I  '11  say  that  I  believe  in  them  all,  modified  a  little 
in  places  to  satisfy  my  reason." 

"  Ah,  they  are  subject  to  modification,  then?" 

"Certainly.  Are  n't  you?  Am  not  I?  Whatever  is  alive 
is  subject  to  modification.  These  doctrines,"  said  she,  "are 
evolving  because  they  have  the  principle  of  life  in  them." 

"So  you  are  an  evolutionist?" 

"The  expert  in  evolutionary  sociology  will  hardly  quarrel 
with  me  for  that." 

"The  expert  in  evolutionary  sociology  deals  with  social 
organisms,  nations,  the  human  race.  Your  Bible  deals  with 
Smith,  Brown,  and  Jones." 

"Well,  what  are  your  organisms  and  nations  but  collec 
tions  of  my  Smiths,  Browns,  and  Joneses?  My  Bible  deals 
with  individuals  because  there  is  nothing  else  to  deal  with. 
The  individual  conscience  is  the  beginning  of  everything." 

' '  Ah !  So  you  would  found  your  evolution  of  humanity  upon 
the  increasing  operation  of  what  you  call  conscience?" 

"Probably  I  would  not  give  all  the  credit  to  what  I  call 
conscience.  Probably  I  'd  give  some  of  it  to  what  I  call  in 
tellect." 

"  In  that  case  you  would  almost  certainly  fall  into  a  fatal 
error." 

"Why,  don't  you  consider  that  the  higher  the  intellectual 
development  the  higher  the  type?" 

"Suppose  we  go  more  slowly,"  said  Mr.  Queed,  intently 
plucking  a  dead  bough  from  an  overhanging  young  oak. 
"  How  do  you  go  about  measuring  a  type?  When  you  speak 
of  a  high  type,  exactly  what  do  you  mean?" 

"When  I  speak  of  a  high  type,"  said  Sharlee,  who  really 
did  not  know  exactly  what  she  meant,  "I  will  merely  say 
that  I  mean  a  type  that  is  high  —  lofty,  you  know  —  tower 
ing  over  other  types." 

She  flaunted  a  gloved  hand  to  suggest  infinite  altitude. 

"You  ought  to  mean,"  he  said  patiently,  "a  type  which 
most  successfully  sketches  the  civilization  of  the  future,  a 


QUEED  205 

type  best  fitted  to  dominate  and  survive.  Now  you  have 
only  to  glance  at  history  to  see  that  intellectual  supremacy 
is  no  guarantee  whatever  of  such  a  type." 

"Oh,  Mr.  Queed,  I  don't  know  about  that." 

" Then  I  will  convince  you,"  said  he.  "Look  at  the  French 
—  the  most  brilliant  nation  intellectually  among  all  the 
European  peoples.  Where  are  they  in  the  race  to-day?  The 
evolutionist  sees  in  them  familiar  symptoms  of  a  retrogres 
sion  which  rarely  ends  but  in  one  way.  Look  at  the  Greeks. 
Every  schoolboy  knows  that  the  Greeks  were  vastly  the  in 
tellectual  superiors  of  any  dominant  people  of  to-day.  An 
anthropologist  of  standing  assures  us  that  the  intellectual 
interval  separating  the  Greek  of  the  Periclean  age  from  the 
modern  Anglo-Saxon  is  as  great  as  the  interval  between  the 
Anglo-Saxon  and  the  African  savage.  Point  to  a  man  alive 
to-day  who  is  the  intellectual  peer  of  Aristotle,  Plato,  or 
Socrates.  Yet  where  are  the  Greeks?  What  did  their  exalted 
intellectual  equipment  do  to  save  them  in  the  desperate 
struggle  for  the  survival  of  the  fittest?  The  Greeks  of  to-day 
are  selling  fruit  at  corner  stands ;  Plato's  descendants  shine 
the  world's  shoes.  They  live  to  warn  away  the  most  casual 
evolutionist  from  the  theory  that  intellectual  supremacy 
necessarily  means  supremacy  of  type.  Where,  then,  you  may 
ask,  does  lie  the  principle  of  triumphant  evolution?  Here 
we  stand  at  the  innermost  heart  of  every  social  scheme. 
Let  us  glance  a  moment,"  said  Mr.  Queed,  "at  Man,  as  we 
see  him  first  emerging  from  the  dark  hinterlands  of  history." 

So,  walking  through  the  sweet  autumn  woods  with  the  one 
girl  he  knew  in  all  the  world  —  barring  only  Miss  Miller  — 
Queed  spoke  heartily  of  the  rise  and  fall  of  peoples  and  the 
destiny  of  man.  Thus  conversing,  they  came  out  of  the  woods 
and  stood  upon  the  platform  of  the  rudimentary  station. 

The  line  ran  here  on  an  elevation,  disappearing  in  the 
curve  of  a  heavy  cut  two  hundred  yards  further  north.  In 
front  the  ground  fell  sharply  and  rolled  out  in  a  vast  green 
meadow,  almost  treeless  and  level  as  a  mill-pond.  Far  off 
on  the  horizon  rose  the  blue  haze  of  a  range  of  foothills, 


206  QUEED 

upon  which  the  falling  sun  momentarily  stood,  like  a  gold- 
piece  edge-up  on  a  table.  Nearer,  to  their  right,  was  a  strip 
of  uncleared  woods,  a  rainbow  of  reds  and  pinks.  Through 
the  meadow  ran  a  little  stream,  such  as  a  boy  of  ten  could 
leap;  for  the  instant  it  stood  fire-red  under  the  sun. 

Sharlee,  obtaining  the  floor  for  a  moment,  asked  Queed 
how  his  own  work  had  been  going.  He  told  her  that  in  one 
sense  it  had  not  been  going  at  all :  not  a  chapter  written  from 
May  to  September. 

"However,"  he  said,  with  an  unclouded  face,  "I  am  now 
giving  six  hours  a  day  to  it.  And  it  is  just  as  well  to  go  slow. 
The  smallest  error  of  angle  at  the  centre  means  a  tremen 
dous  going  astray  at  the  circumference.  I  —  ahem  —  do 
not  feel  that  my  summer  has  been  wasted,  by  any  means. 
You  follow  me?  It  is  worth  some  delay  to  be  doubly  sure 
that  I  put  down  no  plus  signs  as  minuses." 

"Yes,  of  course.  How  beautiful  that  is  out  there,  is  n't  it?  " 

His  eyes  followed  hers  over  the  sunset  spaces.  "No,  it  is 
too  quiet,  too  monotonous.  If  there  must  be  scenery,  let  it 
have  some  originality  and  character.  You  yourself  are  very 
beautiful,  I  think." 

Sharlee  started,  almost  violently,  and  colored  perceptibly. 
If  a  text-book  in  differential  calculus,  upon  the  turning  of  a 
page,  had  thrown  problems  to -the  winds  and  begun  gibber 
ing  purple  poems  of  passion,  she  could  not  have  been  more 
completely  taken  aback.  However,  there  was  no  mistaking 
the  utter  and  veracious  impersonality  of  his  tone. 

"Oh,  do  you  think  so?  I'm  very  glad,  because  I 'm  afraid 
not  many  people  do.  ..." 

Mr.  Queed  remained  silent.  So  far,  so  good;  the  conversa 
tion  stood  in  a  position  eminently  and  scientifically  correct; 
but  Sharlee  could  not  for  the  life  of  her  forbear  to  add :  "But 
I  had  no  idea  you  ever  noticed  people's  looks." 

"So  far  as  I  remember,  I  never  did  before.  I  think  it  was 
the  appearance  of  your  eyes  as  you  looked  out  over  the  plain 
that  attracted  my  attention.  Then,  looking  closer,  I  noticed 
that  you  are  beautiful." 


QUEED  207 

The  compliment  was  so  unique  and  perfect  that  another 
touch  could  only  spoil  it.  Sharlee  immediately  changed  the 
subject. 

"Oh,  Mr.  Queed,  has  the  Department  you  or  Colonel 
Cowles  to  thank  for  the  editorial  about  the  reformatory  this 
morning?" 

"Both  of  us.  He  suggested  it  and  I  wrote  it.  So  you 
really  cannot  tell  us  apart  ?  " 

She  shook  her  head.  "All  this  winter  we  shall  work  pre 
paring  the  State's  mind  for  this  institution,  convincing 
it  so  thoroughly  that  when  the  legislature  meets  again,  it 
simply  will  not  dare  to  refuse  us.  When  I  mention  we  and  us, 
understand  that  I  am  speaking  to  you  Departmentally. 
After  that  there  are  ten  thousand  other  things  that  we 
want  to  do.  But  everything  is  so  immortally  slow!  We  are 
not  allowed  to  raise  our  fingers  without  a  hundred  years'  war 
first.  Don't  you  ever  wish  for  money  —  oceans  and  oceans 
of  lovely  money?" 

"Good  heavens,  no!" 

"I  do.  I'd  pepper  this  State  with  institutions.  Did  you 
know,"  she  said  sweetly,  "that  I  once  had  quite  a  little  pot 
of  money?  When  I  was  one  month  old." 

"Yes,"  said  Queed,  "  I  knew.  In  fact,  I  had  not  been  here 
a  week  before  I  heard  of  Henry  G.  Surface.  Major  Brooke 
speaks  of  him  constantly,  Colonel  Cowles  occasionally. 
Do  you,"  he  asked,  "care  much  about  that?" 

"Well,"  said  Sharlee,  gently,  "I'm  glad  my  father  never 
knew." 

From  half  a  mile  away,  behind  the  bellying  woodland,  a 
faint  hoot  served  notice  that  the  city-bound  car  was  sweep 
ing  rapidly  toward  them.  It  was  on  the  tip  of  Queed's  tongue 
to  remind  Miss  Weyland  that,  in  the  case  of  Fifi,  she  had 
taken  the  ground  that  the  dead  did  know  what  was  going 
on  upon  earth.  But  he  did  not  do  so.  The  proud  way  in 
which  she  spoke  of  my  father  threw  another  thought  upper 
most  in  his  mind. 

"Miss  Weyland,"  he  said  abruptly,  "I  made  a  —  confi- 


208  QUEED 

dence  to  you,  of  a  personal  nature,  the  first  time  I  ever  talked 
with  you.  I  did  not,  it  is  true,  ask  you  to  regard  it  as  a  con 
fidence,  but  —  " 

"I  know,"  interrupted  Sharlee, hurriedly.  "But  of  course 
I  have  regarded  it  in  that  way,  and  have  never  spoken  of  it 
to  anybody." 

"Thank  you.  That  was  what  I  wished  to  say." 

If  Sharlee  had  wanted  to  measure  now  the  difference  that 
she  saw  in  Mr.  Queed,  she  could  have  done  it  by  the  shyness 
that  they  both  felt  in  approaching  a  topic  they  had  once 
handled  with  the  easiest  simplicity.  She  was  glad  of  his  sen 
sitiveness;  it  became  him  better  than  his  early  callousness. 
Sharlee  wore  a  suit  of  black-and-gray  pin-checks,  and  it  was 
very  excellently  tailored ;  for  if  she  purchased  but  two  suits 
a  year,  she  invariably  paid  money  to  have  them  made  by  one 
who  knew  how.  Her  hat  was  of  the  kind  that  other  girls 
study  with  cool  diligence,  while  feigning  engrossment  in  the 
conversation;  and,  repairing  to  their  milliners,  give  orders 
for  accurate  copies  of  it.  From  it  floated  a  silky-looking  veil 
of  gray-white,  which  gave  her  face  that  airy,  cloud-like  set 
ting  that  photographers  of  the  baser  sort  so  passionately 
admire.  The  place  was  as  windy  as  Troy;  from  far  on  the 
ringing  plains  the  breeze  raced  and  fell  upon  this  veil,  cease 
lessly  kicking  it  here  and  there,  in  a  way  that  would  have 
driven  a  strong  man  lunatic  in  seven  minutes.  Sharlee, 
though  a  slim  girl  and  no  stronger  than  another,  remained 
entirely  unconscious  of  the  behavior  of  the  veil;  long  fa 
miliarity  had  bred  contempt  for  its  boisterous  play ;  and,  with 
her  eyes  a  thousand  miles  away,  she  was  wishing  with  her 
whole  heart  that  she  dared  ask  Mr.  Queed  a  question. 

Whereupon,  like  her  marionette  that  she  worked  by  a 
string,  he  opened  his  mouth  and  gravely  answered  her. 

"  I  have  three  theories  about  my  father.  One  is  that  he  is 
an  eccentric  psychologist  with  peculiar,  not  to  say  extraor 
dinary,  ideas  about  the  bringing  up  of  children.  Another  is 
that  because  of  his  own  convenience  or  circumstances,  he 
does  not  care  to  own  me  as  I  am  now.  The  third  is  that 


QUEED  209 

because  of  my  convenience  or  circumstances,  he  thinks  that 
I  may  not  care  to  own  him  as  he  is  now.  I  have  never  heard 
of  or  from  him  since  the  letter  I  showed  you,  nearly  nine 
months  ago.  I  rather  incline  to  the  opinion,"  he  said,  "that 
my  father  is  dead. " 

"  If  he  is  n't,"  said  Sharlee,  gently,  as  the  great  car  whizzed 
up  and  stopped  with  a  jerk,  "I  am  very  sure  that  you  are 
to  find  him  some  day.  If  he  hadn't  meant  that,  he  would 
never  have  asked  you  to  come  all  the  way  from  New  York 
to  settle  here  —  do  you  think  so?" 

"Do  you  know,"  said  Mr.  Queed  —  so  absorbedly  as  to 
leave  her  to  clamber  up  the  car  steps  without  assistance  — 
"if  I  subscribed  to  the  tenets  of  your  religion,  I  might  be 
lieve  that  my  father  was  merely  a  mythical  instrument  of 
Providence — a  tradition  created  out  of  air  just  to  bring  me 
down  here" 

"Why,"  said  Sharlee,  looking  down  from  the  tall  platform, 
as  the  car  whizzed  and  buzzed  and  slowly  started,  "are  n't 
you  coming  ? ' ' 

"No,  I'm  walking,"  said  Mr.  Queed,  and  remembered  at 
the  last  moment  to  pluck  off  his  glistening  new  derby. 

Thus  they  parted,  almost  precipitately,  and,  for  all  of  him, 
might  never  have  met  again  in  this  world.  Half  a  mile  up 
the  road,  it  came  to  the  young  man  that  their  farewell  had 
lacked  that  final  word  of  ceremony  to  which  he  now  aspired. 
To  those  who  called  at  his  office,  to  the  men  he  met  at  the 
sign  of  the  Mercury,  even  to  Nicolovius  when  he  betook 
himself  from  the  lamplit  sitting-room,  it  was  his  carefully 
attained  habit  to  say:  "I  hope  to  see  you  again  soon."  He 
meant  the  hope,  with  these,  only  in  the  most  general  and  per 
functory  sense.  Why,  then,  had  he  omitted  this  civil  tag  and 
postscript  in  his  parting  with  Miss  Weyland,  to  whom  he 
could  have  said  it  —  yes,  certainly  —  with  more  than  usual 
sincerity?  Certainly;  he  really  did  hope  to  see  her  again 
soon.  For  she  was  an  intelligent,  sensible  girl,  and  knew 
more  about  him  than  anybody  in  the  world  except  Tim 
Queed. 


210  QUEED 

Gradually  it  was  borne  in  upon  him  that  the  reason  he  had 
failed  to  tell  Miss  Weyland  that  he  hoped  to  see  her  again 
soon  was  exactly  the  fact  that  he  did  hope  to  see  her  again 
soon.  Off  his  guard  for  this  reason,  he  had  fallen  into  a 
serious  lapse.  Looking  with  untrained  eyes  into  the  future, 
he  saw  no  way  in  which  a  man  who  had  failed  to  tell  a  lady 
that  he  hoped  to  see  her  again  soon  was  ever  to  retrieve  his 
error.  It  was  good-by,  Charles  Weyland,  for  sure. 

However,  Miss  Weyland  herself  resolved^all  these  perplexi 
ties  by  appearing  at  Mrs.  Paynter's  supper-table  before  the 
month  was  out;  and  this  exploit  she  repeated  at  least  once, 
and  maybe  twice,  during  the  swift  winter  that  followed. 

On  January  14,  or  February  23,  or  it  might  have  been 
March  2,  Queafl  unexpectedly  reentered  the  dining-room, 
toward  eight  o'clock,  with  the  grave  announcement  that  he 
had  a  piece  of  news.  Sharlee  was  alone  in  the  room,  conclud 
ing  the  post-prandial  chores  with  the  laying  of  the  Turkey- 
red  cloth.  She  was  in  fickle  vein  this  evening,  as  it  chanced ; 
and  instead  of  respectfully  inquiring  the  nature  of  his  tid 
ings,  as  was  naturally  and  properly  expected  of  her,  she  re 
ceived  the  young  man  with  a  fire  of  breezy  inconsequentiali- 
ties  which  puzzled  and  annoyed  him  greatly. 

She  admitted,  without  pressure,  that  she  had  been  hoping 
for  his  return ;  had  in  fact  been  dawdling  over  the  duties  of 
the  dining-room  on  that  very  expectation.  From  there  her 
fancy  grew.  Audaciously  she  urged  his  reluctant  attention 
to  the  number  of  her  comings  to  Mrs.  Paynter's  in  recent 
months.  With  an  exceedingly  stagey  counterfeit  of  a  down 
cast  eye,  she  hinted  at  gossip  lately  arising  from  public  obser 
vation  of  these  visits:  gossip,  namely,  to  the  effect  that  Miss 
Weyland's  ostensible  suppings  with  her  aunt  were  neither 
better  nor  worse  than  so  many  bold  calls  upon  Mr.  Queed. 
Her  lip  quivered  alarmingly  over  such  a  confession;  un 
doubtedly  she  looked  enormously  abashed. 

Mr.  Queed,  for  his  part,  looked  highly  displeased  and  more 
than  a  shade  uncomfortable.  He  annihilated  all  such  fool- 


QUEED  211 

ishness  by  a  look  and  a  phrase;  observed,  in  a  stately  open 
ing,  that  she  would  hardly  trouble  to  deny  empty  rumor  of 
this  sort,  since  —  , 

"I  can't  deny  it,  you  see!  Because,"  she  interrupted, 
raising  her  eyes  and  turning  upon  him  a  sudden  dazzling 
yet  outrageous  smile  —  "it's  true." 

She  skipped  away,  smiling  to  herself,  happily  putting 
things  away  and  humming  an  air.  Queed  watched  her  in  an 
noyed  silence.  His  adamantine  gravity  inspired  her  with  an 
irresistible  impulse  to  levity ;  so  the  law  of  averages  claimed 
its  innings. 

" While  you  are  thinking  up  what  to  say,"  she  rattled 
on,  "might  I  ask  your  advice  on  a  sociological  problem  that 
was  just  laid  before  me  by  Laura?" 

"Well,"  he  said  impatiently,  "who  is  Laura?" 

"Laura  is  the  loyal  negress  who  cooks  the  food  for  Mrs. 
Paynter's  bright  young  men.  Her  husband  first  deserted  her, 
next  had  the  misfortune  to  get  caught  while  burgling,  and  is 
at  present  doing  time,  as  the  saying  is.  Now  a  young 
bright-skin  negro  desires  to  marry  Laura,  and  speaks  in 
urgent  tones  of  the  divorce  court.  Her  attitude  is  more  than 
willing,  but  she  learns  that  a  divorce,  at  the  lowest  conceiv 
able  price,  will  cost  fifteen  dollars,  and  she  had  rather  put 
the  money  in  a  suit  and  bonnet.  But  a  thought  no  larger 
than  a  man's  hand  has  crossed  her  mind,  and  she  said  to  me 
just  now:  'I  'clare,  Miss  Sharly,  it  do  look  like,  when  you 
got  a  beau  and  he  want  to  marry  you,  and  all  the  time  axin' 
and  coaxin'  an'  beggin'  you  to  get  a  div-o'ce/it  do  look  like 
he  ought  to  pay  for  the  div-o'ce.'  Now  what  answer  has 
your  old  science  to  give  to  a  real  heart  problem  such  as 
that?" 

"May  I  ask  that  you  will  put  the  napkins  away,  or  at 
the  least  remain  stationary?  It  is  impossible  for  me  to  talk 
with  you  while  you  flutter  about  in  this  way." 

At  last  she  came  and  sat  down  meekly  at  the  table,  her 
hands  clasped  before  her  in  rather  a  devotional  attitude, 
while  he,  standing,  fixed  her  with  his  unwavering  gaze. 


212  QUEED 

"I  speak  to  you,"  he  began,  uncompromisingly,  "as  to 
Mrs.  Paynter's  agent.  Professor  Nicolovius  is  going  to  move 
in  the  spring  and  take  an  apartment  or  small  house.  He  has 
invited  me  to  share  such  apartment  or  house  with  him." 

1 '  What !   But  you  declined  ? ' ' 

"On  the  contrary,  I  accepted  at  once." 

Mrs.  Paynter's  agent  was  much  surprised  and  interested 
by  this  news,  and  said  so.  "  But  how  in  the  world,"  she  went 
on,  puzzled,  "did  you  make  him  like  you  so?  I  always  sup 
posed  that  he  hated  everybody  —  he  does  me,  I  know." 

"I  believe  he  does  hate  everybody  but  me." 

"Strange — extraordinary!"  said  Sharlee,  picturing  the 
two  scholars  alone  together  in  their  flat,  endeavoring  to 
soft-boil  eggs  on  one  of  those  little  fixtures  over  the  gas. 

"I  can  see  nothing  in  the  least  extraordinary  in  the  re 
fusal  of  a  cultured  gentleman  to  hate  me." 

"I  don't  mean  it  that  way  at  all  —  not  at  all!  But  Pro 
fessor  Nicolovius  must  know  cultured  gentlemen,  congenial 
roomers,  who  are  nearer  his  own  age  — " 

"Oh,  not  necessarily,"  said  Queed,  and  sat  down  in  the 
chair  by  her,  Major  Brooke's  chair.  "He  is  a  most  unsocial 
sort  of  man,"  —  this  from  the  little  Doctor!  —  "and  I  doubt 
if  he  knows  anybody  better  than  he  knows  me.  That  he 
knows  me  so  well  is  due  solely  to  the  fact  that  we  have  been 
forced  on  each  other  three  times  a  day  for  over  a  year.  For 
the  first  month  or  so  after  I  came  here,  we  remained  entire 
strangers,  I  remember,  and  passed  each  other  on  the  stairs 
without  speaking.  Gradually,  however,  he  has  come  to  take 
a  great  fancy  to  me." 

"And  is  that  why  you  are  going  off  to  a  honeymoon  cot 
tage  with  him?" 

"Hardly.  I  am  going  because  it  will  be  the  best  sort  of 
arrangement  for  me." 

"Oh!" 

"I  will  pay,  you  see,"  said  Queed,  "no  more  than"  I  am 
paying  here;  for  that  matter,  I  have  no  doubt  that  I  could 
beat  him  down  to  five  dollars  a  week,  if  I  cared  to  do  so. 


QUEED  213 

In  return  I  shall  have  decidedly  greater  comforts  and  con 
veniences,  far  greater  quiet  and  independence,  and  complete 
freedom  from  interruptions  and  intrusions.  The  arrange 
ment  will  be  a  big  gain  in  several  ways  for  me." 

"And  have  you  taken  a  great  fancy  to  Professor  Nico- 
lovius,  too?" 

" Oh,  no!  —  not  at  all.  But  that  has  very  little  to  do  with 
it.  At  least  he  has  the  great  gift  of  silence." 

Sharlee  looked  at  his  absorbed  face  closely.  She  thought 
that  his  head  in  profile  was  very  fine,  though  certainly  his 
nose  was  too  prominent  for  beauty.  But  what  she  was  won 
dering  was  whether  the  little  Doctor  had  really  changed  so 
much  after  all. 

"Well,"  said  she,  slowly,  "I'm  sorry  you're  going." 

"Sorry  —  why?  It  would  appear  to  me  that  under  the 
tenets  of  your  religion  you  ought  to  be  glad.  You  ought  to 
compliment  me  for  going." 

"I  don't  find  anything  in  the  tenets  of  my  religion  that 
requires  you  to  go  off  and  room-keep  with  Professor  Nico- 
lovius." 

"You  do  not?  It  is  a  tremendous  kindness  to  him,  I  as 
sure  you.  To  have  a  place  of  his  own  has  long  been  his  dream, 
he  tells  me;  but  he  cannot  afford  it  without  the  financial 
assistance  I  would  give.  Again,  even  if  he  could  finance  it, 
he  would  not  venture  to. try  it  alone,  because  of  his  health. 
It  appears  that  he  is  subject  to  some  kind  of  attacks  — 
heart,  I  suppose  —  and  does  not  want  to  be  alone.  I  have 
keard  him  walking  his  floor  at  3  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Do 
you  know  anything  about  his  life?" 

"No.   Nothing." 

"I  know  everything." 

He  paused  for  her  to  ask  him  questions,  that  he  might  have 
the  pleasure  of  refusing  her.  But  instead  of  prying,  Sharlee 
said:  "Still  I'm  sorry  that  you  are  going." 

"Well?  Why?" 

"Because,"  said  Sharlee. 

"Proceed." 


214  QUEED 

"Because  I  don't  like  his  eyes." 

"The  question,  from  your  point  of  view,"  said  Mr.  Queed, 
"  is  a  moral  —  not  an  optic  one.  These  acts  which  confer  ben 
efits  on  others,"  he  continued,  "so  peculiarly  commended 
by  your  religion,  are  conceived  by  it  to  work  moral  good  to 
the  doer.  The  eyes  (which  you  use  synecdochically  to  re 
present  the  character]  of  the  person  to  whom  they  are  done, 
have  nothing  — ' ' 

"Mr.  Queed,"  said  Sharlee,  briskly  interrupting  his  exeget- 
ical  words,  "I  believe  you  are  going  off  with  Professor 
Nicolovius  chiefly  because  —  you  think  he  needs  you!" 

He  looked  up  sharply,  much  surprised  and  irritated. 
"That  is  absolutely  foolish  and  absurd.  I  have  nothing  in 
the  world  to  do  with  what  Professor  Nicolovius  needs.  You 
must  always  remember  that  I  am  not  a  subscriber  to  the 
tenets  of  your  religion." 

"It  is  not  too  late.    I  always  remember  that  too." 

"  But  I  must  say  frankly  that  I  am  much  surprised  at  the 
way  you  interpret  those  tenets.  For  if  — " 

"Oh,  you  should  never  have  tested  me  on  such  a  question! 
Don't  you  see  that  I  'm  the  judge  sitting  in  his  or  her  own 
case?  Two  boarders  gone  at  one  swoop!  How  shall  I  break 
the  news  to  Aunt  Jennie?  " 

He  thought  this  over  in  silence  and  then  said  impatiently ; 
"I'm  sorry,  but  I  do  not  feel  that  I  can  consider  that 
phase  of  the  matter." 

"Certainly  not." 

"The  arrangement  between  us  is  a  strictly  business  one, 
based  on  mutual  advantage,  and  to  be  terminated  at  will 
as  the  interests  of  either  party  dictates." 

"Exactly." 

He  turned  a  sharp  glance  on  her,  and  rose.  Having  risen 
he  stood  a  moment,  irresolute,  frowning,  troubled  by  a 
thought.  Then  he  said,  in  an  annoyed,  nervous  voice:  — 

"  Look  here,  will  it  be  a  serious  thing  for  your  aunt  to  lose 
me?" 

The  agent  burst  out  laughing.    He  was  surprised  by  her 


QUEED  215 

merriment;  he  could  not  guess  that  it  covered  her  instan 
taneous  discovery  that  she  liked  him  more  than  she  would 
ever  have  thought  possible. 

"While  I'm  on  the  other  side  —  remember  that,"  said 
she,  " I'm  obliged  to  tell  you  that  we  can  let  the  rooms  any 
day  at  an  hour's  notice.  Not  that  the  places  of  our  two 
scholars  can  ever  be  filled,  but  the  boarding-house  business 
is  booming  these  days.  We  are  turning  them  away.  Do  you 
remember  the  night  that  you  walked  in  here  an  hour  late 
for  supper,  and  I  arose  and  collected  twenty  dollars  from 
you?" 

"Oh,  yes.  ...  By  the  way  —  I  have  never  asked  — 
whatever  became  of  that  extraordinary  pleasure-dog  of 
yours?" 

"Thank  you.  He  is  bigger  and  more  pleasurable  than 
ever.  I  take  him  out  every  afternoon,  and  each  day,  just  as 
the  clock  strikes  five,  he  knocks  over  a  strange  young  man 
for  me.  It  is  delightful  sport.  But  he  has  never  found  any 
young  man  that  he  enjoyed  as  heartily  as  he  did  you." 

Gravely  he  moved  toward  the  door.  "  I  must  return  to  my 
work.  You  will  tell  your  aunt  I  have  given  notice?  Well  — 
good-evening. 

"  Good-evening,  Mr.  Queed." 

The  door  half  shut  upon  him,  but  opened  again  to  admit 
his  head  and  shoulders. 

"By  the  way,  there  was  a  curious  happening  yesterday 
which  might  be  of  interest  to  you.  Did  you  see  it  in  the  Post 
—  a  small  item  headed  '  The  Two  Queeds '  ?  " 

"Oh  —  no!   About  you  and  Tim?" 

"About  Tim,  but  not  about  me.  His  beat  was  changed  the 
other  day,  it  seems,  and  early  yesterday  morning  a  bank  in 
his  new  district  was  broken  into.  Tim  went  in  and  arrested 
the  burglar  after  a  desperate  fight  in  the  dark.  When  other 
policemen  came  and  turned  on  the  lights,  Tim  discovered  to 
his  horror  that  he  had  captured  his  brother  Murphy." 


XVIII 

Of  President  West  of  Old  Blaines  College,  his  Trustees  and  his 
Troubles;  his  Firmness  in  the  Brown- Jones  Hazing  Incident 
so  misconstrued  by  Malicious  Asses;  his  Article  for  the  Post, 
and  why  it  was  never  printed:  all  ending  in  West's  Profound 
Dissatisfaction  with  the  Rewards  of  Patriotism. 

THE  way  of  Blaines  College  was  not  wholly  smooth  that 
winter,  and  annoyances  rose  to  fret  the  fine  edge 
of  President  West's  virgin  enthusiasms.  The  opening 
had  been  somewhat  disappointing.  True,  there  were  more 
students  than  last  year,  the  exact  increment  being  nine.  But 
West  had  hoped  for  an  increase  of  fifty,  and  had  communi 
cated  his  expectations  to  the  trustees,  who  were  correspond 
ingly  let  down  when  the  actual  figures  —  total  enrolment, 
167  —  were  produced  at  the  October  meeting.  The  young 
president  explained  about  the  exasperating  delays  in  getting 
out  his  advertising  literature,  but  the  trustees  rather  hemmed 
over  the  bills  and  said  that  that  was  a  lot  of  money.  And  one 
of  them  bluntly  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  President 
had  not  assumed  his  duties  till  well  along  in  September. 

West,  with  charming  humility  and  good  humor,  asked  in 
dulgence  for  his  inexperience.  His  mistake,  he  said,  in 
giving  an  excess  of  time  to  the  study  of  the  great  collegiate 
systems  of  the  old  world,  if  it  was  a  mistake,  was  one  that 
could  hardly  be  repeated.  Next  year  .  .  . 

"Meantime,"  said  the  blunt  trustee,  "you've  got  a 
ten  per  cent  increase  in  expenditures  and  but  nine  more 
stoodents." 

"Let  us  not  wholly  forget,"  said  West,  with  his  disarm 
ing  smile,  "my  hope  to  add  substantially  to  the  endowment." 

But  he  marked  this  trustee  as  one  likely  to  give  trouble 
in  the  future,  and  hence  to  be  handled  with  care.  He  was 


QUEED  217 

a  forthright,  upstanding,  lantern-jawed  man  of  the  people, 
by  the  name  of  James  E.  Winter.  A  contractor  by  profes 
sion  and  a  former  member  of  the  city  council,  he  represented 
the  city  on  the  board  of  trustees.  For  the  city  appropriated 
seventy-five  hundred  dollars  a  year,  for  the  use  of  the  col 
lege,  and  in  return  for  this  munificence,  reserved  the  right 
to  name  three  members  of  the  board. 

Nor  was  Mr.  Winter  the  only  man  of  his  kidney  on  that 
directorate.  From  his  great  friend  among  the  trustees,  Mr. 
Fyne,  donator  of  the  fifty  thousand  dollar  endowment  on 
which  Blaines  College  partly  subsisted,  West  learned  that 
his  election  to  the  presidency  had  failed  of  being  unanimous. 
In  fact,  the  vote  had  stood  seven  to  five,  and  the  meeting 
at  which  he  was  chosen  had  at  times  approached  violence. 
Of  the  five,  two  had  voted  against  West  because  they  thought 
that  old  Dr.  Gilfillan's  resignation  did  not  have  that  purely 
spontaneous  character  so  desirable  under  the  circumstances ; 
two  because  they  did  not  think  that  West  had  the  qualifica 
tions,  or  would  have  the  right  point  of  view,  for  a  people's 
college;  and  one  for  all  these  reasons,  or  for  any  other  reason, 
which  is  to  say  for  personal  reasons.  This  one,  said  Mr. 
Fyne,  was  James  E.  Winter. 

"  I  know,"  said  West.  "  He 's  never  got  over  the  poundings 
we  used  to  give  him  in  the  Post  when  he  trained  with  those 
grafters  on  the  Council.  He'd  put  poison  in  my  tea  on  half 
a  chance." 

Unhappily,  the  sharp  cleft  made  in  the  board  at  the  time 
of  the  election  survived  and  deepened.  The  trustees  devel 
oped  a  way  of  dividing  seven  to  five  on  almost  all  of  West's 
recommendations  which  was  anything  but  encouraging. 
An  obstinate,  but  human,  pride  of  opinion  tended  to  keep 
the  two  factions  facing  each  other  intact,  and  matters  very 
tiny  in  themselves  served,  as  the  weeks  went  by,  to  aggra 
vate  this  feeling.  Once,  at  least,  before  Christmas,  it  required 
all  of  West's  tact  and  good-humor  to  restore  the  appear 
ance  of  harmony  to  a  meeting  which  was  fast  growing  ex* 
cited. 


2i8  QUEED 

But  the  young  president  would  not  allow  himself  to  become 
discouraged.  He  earnestly  intended  to  show  James  E.  Win 
ter  which  of  the  two  knew  most  about  running  a  modern 
institution  of  the  higher  learning.  Only  the  perfectest  bloom 
of  his  ardor  faded  under  the  constant  handling  of  rough 
fingers.  The  interval  separating  Blaines  College  and  the 
University  of  Paris  began  to  loom  larger  than  it  had  seemed 
in  the  halcyon  summer-time,  and  the  classic  group  of  noble 
piles  receded  further  and  further  into  the  prophetic  haze. 
But  West's  fine  energy  and  optimism  remained.  And  he 
continued  to  see  in  the  college,  unpromising  though  the  out 
look  was  in  some  respects,  a  real  instrument  for  the  uplift. 

The  president  sat  up  late  on  those  evenings  when  social 
diversions  did  not  claim  his  time,  going  over  and  over  his 
faculty  list  with  a  critical  eye,  and  always  with  profound 
disapproval.  There  were  only  three  Ph.D.'s  among  them, 
and  as  a  whole  the  average  of  attainment  was  below,  rather 
than  above,  the  middle  grade.  They  were,  he  was  obliged 
to  admit,  a  lot  of  cheap  men  for  a  cheap  college.  With  such 
a  staff,  a  distinguished  standard  was  clearly  not  to  be  hoped 
for.  But  what  to  do  about  it?  His  general  idea  during  the 
summer  had  been  mercilessly  to  weed  out  the  weak  brothers 
in  the  faculty,  a  few  at  a  time,  and  fill  their  places  with  men 
of  the  first  standing.  But  now  a  great  obstacle  presented 
itself.  Men  of  the  first  standing  demanded  salaries  of  the 
first  standing.  Blaines  College  was  not  at  present  in  position 
to  pay  such  salaries.  Obviously  one  of  two  courses  remained. 
Either  the  elevation  of  the  faculty  must  proceed  in  a  very 
modest  form,  or  else  Blaines  College  must  get  in  position 
to  pay  larger  salaries.  West  decided  to  move  in  both  direc 
tions. 

There  was  one  man  on  the  staff  that  West  objected  to 
from  the  first  faculty  meeting.  This  was  a  man  named 
Harkly  Young,  a  youngish,  tobacco-chewing  fellow  of  lowly 
origin  and  unlessoned  manners,  who  was  "assistant  profes 
sor"  of  mathematics  at  a  salary  of  one  thousand  dollars  a 
year.  Professor  Young's  bearing  and  address  did  anything 


QUEED  219 

but  meet  the  president's  idea  of  scholarliness ;  and  West  had 
no  difficulty  in  convincing  himself  of  the  man's  incompe 
tence.  Details  came  to  his  attention  from  time  to  time  dur 
ing  the  autumn  which  served  to  strengthen  his  snap-shot 
judgment,  but  he  made  the  mistake,  doubtless,  of  failing 
to  communicate  his  dissatisfaction  to  Professor  Young,  and 
so  giving  him  an  inkling  of  impending  disaster.  West  knew 
of  just  the  man  for  this  position,  a  brilliant  young  assistant 
superintendent  of  schools  in  another  part  of  the  state,  who 
could  be  secured  for  the  same  salary.  Eager  to  begin  his 
house-cleaning  and  mark  some  definite  progress,  West  hurled 
his  bolt  from  the  blue.  About  the  middle  of  December  he 
dispatched  a  letter  to  the  doomed  man  notifying  him  that 
his  services  would  not  be  required  after  the  Christmas  re 
cess. 

Instead  of  accepting  his  dismissal  in  a  quiet  and  gentle 
manly  way,  and  making  of  himself  a  glad  thank-offering  on 
the  altar  of  scholarship,  Professor  Young  had  the  poor  taste 
to  create  an  uproar.  After  satisfying  himself  in  a  stirring 
personal  interview  that  the  president's  letter  was  final,  he 
departed  in  a  fury,  and  brought  suit  against  the  college  and 
Charles  Gardiner  West  personally  for  his  year's  salary. 
He  insisted  that  he  had  been  engaged  for  the  full  college 
year.  To  the  court  he  represented  that  he  was  a  married 
man  with  six  children,  and  absolutely  dependent  upon  his 
position  for  his  livelihood. 

Professor  Young  happened  to  be  very  unpopular  with  both 
his  colleagues  and  the  students,  and  probably  all  felt  that  it 
was  a  case  of  good  riddance,  particularly  as  West's  new  man 
rode  rapidly  into  general  popularity.  These  facts  hampered 
the  Winterites  on  the  board,  but  nevertheless  they  made  the 
most  of  the  incident,  affecting  to  believe  that  Young  had 
been  harshly  treated.  The  issue,  they  intimated,  was  one 
of  the  classes  against  the  masses.  The  Chronicle,  the  penny 
evening  paper  which  found  it  profitable  business  to  stand 
for  the  under-dog  and  "the  masses,"  scareheaded  a  jaundiced 
account  of  the  affair,  built  up  around  an  impassioned  state- 


220  QUEED 

ment  from  Professor  Young.  The  same  issue  carried  an  edi 
torial  entitled,  "The  Kid  Glove  College."  West  laughed  at 
the  editorial,  but  he  was  a  sensitive  man  to  criticism  and 
the  sarcastic  gibes  wounded  him.  When  the  attorneys  for 
the  college  advised  a  settlement  out  of  court  by  paying  the 
obstreperous  Young  three  hundred  dollars  in  cash,  James 
Winter  was  outspoken  in  his  remarks.  A  resolution  re 
straining  the  president  from  making  any  changes  in  the 
faculty,  without  the  previous  consent  and  approval  of  the 
board,  was  defeated,  after  warm  discussion,  by  the  margin 
of  seven  votes  to  five. 

"By  the  Lord,  gentlemen,"  said  Mr.  Fyne,  indignantly, 
"if  you  cannot  put  any  confidence  in  the  discretion  of  your 
president,  you'd  better  get  one  whose  discretion  you  can 
put  confidence  in." 

"That's  just  what  I  say,"  rejoined  James  E.  Winter, 
with  instant  significance. 

Other  changes  in  his  faculty  West  decided  to  defer  till  the 
beginning  of  a  new  year.  All  his  surplus  energy  should  be 
concentrated,  he  decided,  on  raising  an  endowment  fund 
which  should  put  the  college  on  a  sound  financial  basis  be 
fore  that  time  came.  But  here  again  he  collided  with  the 
thick  wall  of  trustee  bigotry. 

In  the  city,  despite  his  youth,  he  was  already  well  known, 
as  a  speaker,  and  was  a  favorite  orator  on  agreeable  occa 
sions  of  a  semi-public  nature.  This  was  a  sort  of  prestige 
that  was  well  worth  cultivating.  In  the  State,  and  even 
outside  of  it,  he  had  many  connections  through  various  act 
ivities,  and  by  deft  correspondence  he  easily  put  himself  in 
line  for  such  honors  as  they  had  to  offer.  Invitations  to 
speak  came  rolling  in  in  the  most  gratifying  way.  His  plan 
was  to  mount  upon  these  to  invitations  of  an  even  higher 
class.  In  December  he  made  a  much  admired  address  be 
fore  the  Associated  Progress  Boards.  The  next  month, 
through  much  subtle  wire-pulling,  he  got  himself  put  on  the 
toast  list  at  the  annual  banquet  of  the  distinguished  Amer 
ican  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  the  Higher  Education. 


QUEED  221 

There  his  name  met  on  equal  terms  with  names  as  yet  far 
better  known.  He  spoke  for  ten  minutes  and  sat  down 
with  the  thrill  of  having  surpassed  himself.  A  famous  fin 
ancier  who  sat  with  him  at  the  speaker's  table  told  him 
that  his  speech  was  the  best  of  the  evening,  because  the 
shortest,  and  asked  several  questions  about  Blaines  Col 
lege.  The  young  President  returned  home  in  a  fine  glow, 
which  the  hostile  trustees  promptly  subjected  to  a  cold 
douche. 

"  I  'd  like  to  inquire,"  said  James  E.  Winter,  sombrely,  at 
the  January  board  meeting,  "what  is  the  point,  if  any,  of 
the  President  of  Blaines  College  trapesing  all  over  the  coun 
try  to  attend  these  here  banquets." 

They  used  unacademic  as  well  as  plain  language  in  the 
Blaines  board  meeting  by  this  time.  West  smiled  at  Trustee 
Winter's  question.  To  him  the  man  habitually  seemed  as 
malapropos  as  a  spiteful  old  lady. 

"The  point  is,  Mr.  Winter,  to  get  in  touch  with  the  sources 
of  endowment  funds.  Blaines  College  on  its  present  founda 
tion  cannot  hope  to  compete  with  enlightened  modern  col 
leges  of  from  five  to  one  hundred  times  its  resources.  If  we 
mean  to  advance,  we  must  do  it  by  bringing  Blaines  favor 
ably  to  the  attention  of  philanthropists  who  — " 

"No,  sir!"  roared  Winter,  bringing  his  contractor's  fist 
down  thuddingly  upon  the  long  table.  "Such  noo-f angled 
ideas  are  against  the  traditions  of  old  Blaines  College,  I 
say!  Old  Blaines  College  is  not  asking  for  alms.  Old  Blaines 
College  is  not  a  whining  beggar,  whatever  those  Yankee 
colleges  may  be.  I  say,  gentlemen,  it 's  beneath  the  dignity 
of  old  Blaines  College  for  its  president  to  go  about  Noo  York 
bowing  and  scraping  and  passing  the  hat  to  Rocky  feller,  and 
such-like  boocaneers." 

To  West's  unfeigned  surprise,  this  view  of  the  matter  met 
with  solid  backing.  Reminiscences  of  the  "tainted  money" 
controversy  appeared  in  the  trustees'  talk.  "Subsidized 
education"  was  heard  more  than  once.  One  spoke  bitterly 
of  Oil  Colleges.  No  resolution  was  introduced,  James  E. 


222  QUEED 

Winter  having  inadvertently  come  unprepared,  but  the 
majority  opinion  was  clearly  that  old  Blaines  College 
(founded  1894)  should  draw  in  her  traditional  skirts  from 
the  yellow  flood  then  pouring  over  the  country,  and  remain, 
small  it  may  be,  but  superbly  incorruptible. 

For  once,  West  left  his  trustees  thoroughly  disgusted  and 
out  of  humor. 

"Why,  why  are  we  doomed  to  this  invincible  hostility 
to  a  new  idea?  "  he  cried,  in  the  bitterness  of  his  soul.  "  Here 
is  the  spirit  of  progress  not  merely  beckoning  to  us,  but 
fairly  springing  into  our  laps,  and  because  it  speaks  in  ac 
cents  that  were  unfamiliar  to  the  slave  patriarchy  of  a  hun 
dred  years  ago,  we  drag  it  outside  the  city  and  crucify  it.  I 
tell  you  these  old  Bourbons  whom  we  call  leaders  are  mill 
stones  around  our  necks,  and  we  can  never  move  an  inch 
until  we've  laid  the  last  one  of  them  under  the  sod." 

Sharlee  Weyland,  to  whom  he  repeated  this  thought, 
though  she  was  all  sympathy  with  his  difficulties,  did  not 
nevertheless  think  that  this  was  quite  fair.  "Look,"  she 
said,  "at  the  tremendous  progress  we've  made  in  the  last 
ten  years." 

"Yes,"  he  flashed  back  at  her,  "and  who  can  say  that  a 
state  like  Massachusetts,  with  the  same  incomparable  op 
portunities,  would  n't  have  made  ten  times  as  much!" 

But  he  was  the  best-natured  man  alive,  and  his  vexation 
soon  faded.  In  a  week,  he  was  once  more  busy  planning  out 
ways  and  means.  He  sought  funds  in  the  metropolis  no 
more,  and  the  famous  financier  spared  him  the  mortifica 
tion  of  having  to  refuse  a  donation  by  considerately  not  of 
fering  one.  But  he  continued  to  make  addresses  in  the  State, 
and  in  the  city  he  was  in  frequent  demand.  However,  the 
endowment  fund  remained  obstinately  immovable.  By 
February  there  had  been  no  additions,  unless  we  can  count 
five  hundred  dollars  promised  by  dashing  young  Beverley 
Byrd  on  the  somewhat  whimsical  condition  that  his  brother 
Stewart  would  give  an  equal  amount. 

"  Moreover,"  said  young  Mr.  Byrd, "  I  '11  increase  it  to  seven 


QUEED  223 

hundred  and  fifty  dollars  if  your  friend  Winter  will  publicly 
denounce  me  as  a  boocaneer.  It'll  help  me  in  my  business 
to  be  lined  up  with  Rockefeller  and  all  those  Ikes." 

But  this  gift  never  materialized  at  all,  for  the  reason  that 
Stewart  Byrd  kindly  but  firmly  refused  to  give  anything. 
A  rich  vein  of  horse-sense  underlay  Byrd's  philanthropic 
enthusiasms ;  and  even  the  necessity  for  the  continued 
existence  of  old  Blaines  College  appeared  to  be  by  no 
means  clear  in  his  mind. 

"If  you  had  a  free  hand,  Gardiner,"  said  he,  "  that  would 
be  one  thing,  but  you  have  n't.  I  've  had  my  eye  on 
Blaines  for  a  long  time,  and  frankly  I  don't  think  it  is 
entitled  to  any  assistance.  You  have  an  inferior  plant  and 
a  lot  of  inferior  men ;  a  small  college  governed  by  small 
ideas  and  ridden  by  a  close  corporation  of  small  trust 
ees  —  " 

"But  heavens,  man!"  protested  West,  "your  argu 
ment  makes  a  perfect  circle.  You  won't  help  Blaines  be 
cause  it's  poorly  equipped,  and  Blaines  is  poorly  equipped 
because  the  yellow-rich  —  that 's  you  —  won't  help  it." 

Stewart  Byrd  wiped  his  gold-rimmed  glasses,  laughing 
pleasantly.  He  was  the  oldest  of  the  four  brothers,  a  man 
of  authority  at  forty  ;  and  West  watched  him  with  a 
secret  admiration,  not  untouched  by  a  flicker  of  envy. 

"What's  the  answer?  Blessed  if  I  know!  The  fact  is, 
old  fellow,  I  think  you  've  got  an  utterly  hopeless  job  there, 
and  if  I  were  you,  I  believe  I  'd  get  ready  to  throw  it  over 
at  the  first  opportunity." 

West  replied  that  it  was  only  the  hard  things  that  were 
worth  doing  in  this  life.  None  the  less,  as  winter  drew  to  a 
close,  he  insensibly  relaxed  his  efforts  toward  the  immedi 
ate  exaltation  of  old  Blaines.  As  he  looked  more  closely 
into  the  situation,  he  realized  that  his  too  impetuous  desire 
for  results  had  driven  him  to  waste  energy  in  hopeless  di 
rections.  How  could  he  ever  do  anything,  with  a  lot  of  moss- 
backed  trustees  tying  his  hands  and  feet  every  time  he  tried 
to  toddle  a  step  forward  —  he  and  Blaines?  Clearly  the 


224  QUEED 

first  step  of  all  was  to  oust  the  fossils  who  stood  like  rocks 
in  the  path  of  progress,  and  fill  their  places  with  men  who 
could  at  least  recognize  a  progressive  idea  when  they  were 
beaten  across  the  nose  with  it.  He  studied  his  trustee  list 
now  more  purposefully  than  he  had  ever  pored  over  his 
faculty  line  up.  By  the  early  spring,  he  was  ready  to  set 
subtle  influences  going  looking  to  the  defeat  of  the  insurgent 
five,  including  James  E.  Winter,  whose  term  happily  expired 
on  the  first  of  January  following. 

But  the  president's  lines  did  not  all  fall  in  gloomy  and 
prickly  places  in  these  days.  His  perennial  faculty  for  enjoy 
ment  never  deserted  him  even  in  his  darkest  hours.  His  big 
red  automobile,  acquired  on  the  crest  of  Semple  and  West's 
prosperity,  was  constantly  to  be  seen  bowling  down  the 
street  of  an  early-vernal  afternoon,  or  dancing  down  far 
country  lanes  light  with  a  load  of  two.  The  Thursday  Ger 
man  had  known  him  as  of  old,  and  many  were  the  delight 
ful  dinners  where  he  proved,  by  merit  alone,  the  life  of  the 
party.  Nor  were  his  pleasures  by  any  means  all  dissociated 
from  Blaines  College.  The  local  prestige  that  the  president 
acquired  from  his  position  was  decidedly  agreeable  to  him. 
Never  an  educational  point  arose  in  the  life  of  the  city  or 
the  nation  but  the  Post  carried  a  long  interview  giving  Mr. 
West's  views  upon  it.  Corner-stone  laying  afforded  him  a 
sincere  joy.  Even  discussions  with  parents  about  their 
young  hopefuls  was  anything  but  irksome  to  his  buoyant 
nature. 

Best  and  pleasantest  of  all  was  his  relation  with  the  stu 
dents.  His  notable  gift  for  popularity,  however  futile  it  might 
be  with  embittered  asses  like  James  E.  Winter,  served  him 
in  good  stead  here.  West  could  not  conceal  from  himself 
that  the  boys  idolized  him.  With  secret  delight  he  saw  them 
copying  his  walk,  his  taste  in  waistcoats,  the  way  he  brushed 
back  his  hair.  He  had  them  in  relays  to  his  home  to  supper, 
skipping  only  those  of  too  hopeless  an  uncouthness,  and  sent 
them  home  enchanted.  He  had  introduced  into  the  collegiate 
programme  a  five-minute  prayer,  held  every  morning  at  nine, 


QUEED  225 

at  which  he  made  brief  addresses  on  some  phase  of  college 
ideals  every  Tuesday  and  Friday.  Attendance  at  these 
gatherings  was  optional,  but  it  kept  up  in  the  most  grati 
fying  way,  and  sometimes  on  a  Friday  the  little  assembly- 
room  would  be  quite  filled  with  the  frankly  admiring  lads. 
"Why  should  I  mind  the  little  annoyances,"  would  flash 
into  his  mind  as  he  rose  to  speak,  "when  I  can  look  down 
into  a  lot  of  fine,  loyal  young  faces  like  this.  Here  is  what 
counts."  His  appearance  at  student  gatherings  was  always 
attended  by  an  ovation.  He  loved  to  hear  the  old  Blaines 
cheer,  with  three  ringing  "Prexy's"  tacked  on  the  end.  One 
Saturday  in  early  April,  Prexy  took  Miss  A  very  to  a  base 
ball  game,  somewhat  against  her  will,  solely  that  she  might 
see  how  his  students  worshiped  him.  On  the  following 
Saturday,  all  with  even-handed  liberality,  he  took  Miss 
Weyland  to  another  base-ball  game,  with  the  same  delightful 
purpose. 

The  spring  found  West  stronger  and  more  contented  with 
his  lot  as  president  of  a  jerkwater  college,  decidedly  happier 
for  the  burning  out  of  the  fires  of  hot  ambition  which  had 
consumed  his  soul  six  months  earlier.  He  told  himself  that 
he  was  reconciled  to  a  slow  advance  with  fighting  every  inch 
of  the  way.  But  he  saw  the  uselessness  of  fighting  trustees 
who  were  doomed  soon  to  fall,  and  resigned  himself  to  a  quiet, 
in  fact  a  temporarily  suspended,  programme  of  progress. 
And  then,  just  when  everything  seemed  most  comfortably 
serene,  a  new  straw  suddenly  appeared  in  the  wind,  which 
quickly  multiplied  into  a  bundle  and  then  a  bale,  and  all  at 
once  the  camel's  back  had  more  than  it  could  bear.  April 
was  hardly  dead  before  the  college  world  was  in  a  turmoil, 
by  the  side  of  which  the  Young  affair  was  the  mere  buzzing 
of  a  gnat. 

History  is  full  of  incidents  of  the  kind :  incidents  which  are 
trifling  beyond  mention  in  the  beginning,  but  which  malign 
circumstance  distorts  and  magnifies  till  they  set  nations 
daggers-drawn  at  each  other's  throats.  Two  students  lured 
a  "  freshman  "  to  their  room  and  there  invited  him  to  drink  a 


226  QUEED 

marvelous  compound  the  beginnings  of  which  were  fat  pork 
and  olive  oil ;  this  while  standing  on  his  head.  The  freshman 
did  not  feel  in  a  position  to  deny  their  request.  But  his  was 
a  delicate  stomach,  and  the  result  of  his  accommodating 
spirit  was  that  he  became  violently,  though  not  seriously, 
ill.  Thus  the  matter  came  to  the  attention  of  his  parents, 
and  so  to  the  college  authorities.  The  sick  lad  stoutly  de 
clined  to  tell  who  were  his  persecutors,  but  West  managed 
to  track  one  of  them  down  and  summoned  him  to  his  office. 
We  may  call  this  student  Brown;  a  pleasant-mannered  youth 
of  excellent  family,  whose  sister  WTest  sometimes  danced 
with  at  the  Thursday  German.  Brown  said  that  he  had, 
indeed,  been  present  during  the  sad  affair,  that  he  had,  in 
fact,  to  his  eternal  humiliation  and  regret,  aided  and  abetted 
it;  but  he  delicately  hinted  that  the  prime  responsibility 
rested  on  the  shoulders  of  the  other  student.  Rather  un 
wisely,  perhaps,  West  pressed  him  to  disclose  the  name  of 
his  collaborator.  (Brown  afterwards,  to  square  himself 
with  the  students,  alleged  "intimidation.")  A  youth  whom 
we  may  describe  as  Jones  was  mentioned,  and  later,  in  the 
august  private  office,  was  invited  to  tell  what  he  knew  of  the 
disorder.  Henceforward  accounts  vary.  Jones  declared  to 
the  end  that  the  president  promised  a  light  punishment  for 
all  concerned  if  he  would  make  a  clean  breast.  West  as 
serted —  and  who  would  doubt  his  statement?  —  that  he 
had  made  no  promise,  or  even  a  suggestion  of  a  promise, 
of  any  kind.  Be  that  as  it  may,  Jones  proceeded,  though 
declining  to  mention  any  other  name  than  his  own.  He 
declared  positively  that  the  idea  of  hazing  the  freshman  had 
not  originated  with  him,  but  that  he  had  taken  a  culpable 
part  in  it,  for  which  he  was  heartily  sorry.  Asked  whether 
he  considered  himself  or  his  colleague  principally  responsible 
for  the  injury  to  the  freshman's  health,  he  said  that  he  pre 
ferred  not  to  answer.  To  West  this  seemed  a  damaging 
admission,  though  perhaps  not  everybody  would  have  so 
viewed  it.  He  sent  Jones  away  with  no  intimation  of  what 
he  proposed  to  do. 


QUEED  227 

There  was  the  situation,  plain  as  a  barn  at  noonday.  All 
that  was  needed  was  tact,  judgment,  and  a  firm  hand.  The 
young  president  hesitated.  Ordinarily  he  would  have  taken 
a  quiet  hour  in  the  evening  to  think  it  all  over  carefully,  but 
as  it  happened — like  Lord  George  Germaine  and  the  dis 
patch  to  Burgoyne  —  social  engagements  rushed  forward  to 
occupy  his  time.  Next  morning  his  mail  brought  several 
letters,  urging  him  to  set  his  foot  ruthlessly  on  the  serpent- 
head  of  hazing.  His  telephone  rang  with  the  same  firm  coun 
sel.  The  Post,  he  saw,  had  a  long  leading  article  insisting  that 
discipline  must  be  maintained  at  all  hazards.  It  was  observed 
that  this  article  thundered  in  the  old  Colonel's  best  style, 
and  this  was  the  more  noteworthy  in  that  the  article  in  ques 
tion  happened  to  be  written  by  a  young  man  of  the  name  of 
Queed. 

West  would  have  preferred  to  let  the  matter  stand  for  a 
day  or  so,  but  he  saw  that  prompt  and  decisive  action  was 
expected  of  him.  Denying  himself  to  callers,  he  shut  himself 
in  his  office,  to  determine  what  was  just  and  fair  and  right. 
The  advice  of  his  correspondents,  and  of  the  Post,  tallied  ex 
actly  with  what  the  trustees  had  told  him  in  the  beginning 
about  the  traditions  of  old  Blaines.  Hazing  was  not  to  be 
tolerated  under  any  circumstances.  Therefore,  somebody's 
head  would  now  have  to  fall.  There  could  hardly  be  any 
occasion  for  expelling  nice  young  Brown.  For  a  minor  consid 
eration,  it  would  be  decidedly  awkward  henceforward,  to  have 
to  offer  salt  to  Mrs.  Brown  at  dinner,  as  he  had  done  only  last 
week,  with  the  hand  that  had  ruined  her  son's  career.  Much 
more  important,  it  seemed  clear  enough  to  West  that  the  boy 
had  only  been  weak,  and  had  been  tempted  into  misbehavior 
by  his  older  and  more  wilful  comrade.  West  had  never  liked 
young  Jones.  He  was  a  rawboned,  unkempt  sprig  of  the 
masses,  who  had  not  been  included  in  any  of  the  student 
suppers  at  the  president's  house.  Jones's  refusal  to  speak  out 
fully  on  all  the  details  of  the  affair  pointed  strongly,  so  West 
argued,  to  consciousness  of  damning  guilt.  The  path  of  ad 
ministrative  duty  appeared  plain.  West,  to  say  truth,  had 


228  QUEED 

not  at  first  expected  to  apply  the  drastic  penalty  of  expulsion 
at  all,  but  it  was  clear  that  this  was  what  the  city  expected  of 
him.  The  universal  cry  was  for  unshrinking  firmness.  Well, 
he  would  show  them  that  he  was  firm,  and  shrank  from  no 
unpleasantness  where  his  duty  was  concerned.  Brown  he 
ordered  before  him  for  a  severe  reprimand,  and  Jones  he 
summarily  dismissed  from  old  Blaines  College. 

These  decrees  went  into  effect  at  noon.  At  4  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon  the  war-dogs  broke  their  leashes.  Four  was  the 
hour  when  the  "  night "  edition  of  the  Evening  Chronicle  came 
smoking  hot  from  the  presses.  It  appeared  that  young  Jones 
was  the  son,  not  merely  of  a  plumber,  but  of  a  plumber  who 
was  decidedly  prominent  in  lodge  circles  and  the  smaller 
areas  of  politics.  His  case  was  therefore  precisely  the  kind 
that  the  young  men  of  the  Chronicle  loved  to  espouse.  The 
three-column  scare-head  over  their  bitterly  partisan  "story1* 
ran  thus: 

POOR  BOY  KICKED   OUT 
BY  PRESIDENT  WEST 

Close  beside  this,  lest  the  reader  should  fail  to  grasp  the 
full  meaning  of  the  boldface,  was  a  three-column  cartoon, 
crudely  drawn  but  adroit  enough.  It  represented  West,  un 
pleasantly  caricatured,  garbed  in  a  swallow-tail  coat  and 
enormous  white  gloves,  with  a  gardenia  in  his  button-hole, 
engaged  in  booting  a  lad  of  singular  nobility  of  countenance 
out  of  an  open  door.  A  tag  around  the  lad's  neck  described 
him  as  "The  Workingman's  Son."  Under  the  devilish  draw 
ing  ran  a  line  which  said,  succinctly,  "His  Policies."  On 
page  four  was  a  double  column,  double-leaded  editorial, 
liberal  with  capitals  and  entitled:  "Justice  in  Silk  Stockings." 

But  this  was  only  a  beginning.  Next  morning's  Post, 
which  West  had  counted  on  to  come  to  his  assistance  with  a 
ringing  leader,  so  earnestly  discussed  rotation  of  crops  and 
the  approaching  gubernatorial  campaign,  that  it  had  not  a 
line  for  the  little  disturbance  at  the  college.  If  this  was  a 


QUEED  229 

disappointment  to  West,  a  greater  blow  awaited  him.  Not 
to  try  to  gloss  over  the  mortifying  circumstance,  he  was 
hissed  when  he  entered  the  morning  assembly  —  he,  the 
prince,  idol,  and  darling  of  his  students.  Though  the  room 
was  full,  the  hissing  was  of  small  proportions,  but  rather 
too  big  to  be  ignored.  West,  after  debating  with  himself 
whether  or  not  he  should  notice  it,  made  a  graceful  and  manly 
two-minute  talk  which,  he  flattered  himself,  effectually 
abashed  the  lads  who  had  so  far  forgotten  themselves. 
None  the  less  the  demonstration  cut  him  to  the  quick. 
When  four  o'clock  came  he  found  himself  waiting  for  the  ap 
pearance  of  the  Chronicle  with  an  anxiety  which  he  had  never 
conceived  possible  with  regard  to  that  paper.  A  glance  at 
its  lurid  front  showed  that  the  blatherskites  had  pounded 
him  harder  than  ever.  A  black  headline  glared  with  the  un 
truth  that  President  West  had  been  "  Hissed  by  Entire 
Student  Body."  Editorially,  the  Chronicle  passionately  in 
quired  whether  the  taxpayers  enjoyed  having  the  college 
which  they  so  liberally  supported  (exact  amount  seventy- 
five  hundred  dollars  a  year)  mismanaged  in  so  gross  a  way. 

West  put  a  laughing  face  upon  these  calumnies,  but  to 
himself  he  owned  that  he  was  deeply  hurt.  Dropping  in  at 
the  club  that  night,  he  found  a  group  of  men,  all  his  friends, 
eagerly  discussing  the  shindig,  as  they  called  it.  Joining  in 
with  that  perfect  good-humor  and  lack  of  false  pride  which 
was  characteristic  of  him,  he  gathered  that  all  of  them 
thought  he  had  made  a  mistake.  It  seemed  to  be  considered 
that  Brown  had  put  himself  in  a  bad  light  by  trying  to  throw 
the  blame  on  Jones.  Jones,  they  said,  should  not  have  been 
bounced  without  Brown,  and  probably  the  best  thing  would 
have  been  not  to  bounce  either.  The  irritating  thing  about 
this  latter  view  was  that  it  was  exactly  what  West  had 
thought  in  the  first  place,  before  pressure  was  applied  to 
him. 

In  the  still  watches  of  the  night  the  young  man  was  harried 
by  uncertainties  and  tortured  by  stirring  suspicions.  Had 
he  been  fair  to  Jones,  after  all?  Was  his  summary  action  in 


230  QUEED 

regard  to  that  youth  prompted  in  the  faintest  degree  by 
personal  dislike?  Was  he  conceivably  the  kind  of  man  who 
is  capable  of  thinking  one  thing  and  doing  another?  The 
most  afflicting  of  all  doubts,  doubt  of  himself,  kept  the 
young  man  tossing  on  his  pillow  for  at  least  an  hour. 

But  he  woke  with  a  clear-cut  decision  singing  in  his  mind 
and  gladdening  his  morning.  He  would  take  Jones  back. 
He  would  generously  reinstate  the  youth,  on  the  ground  that 
the  public  mortification  already  put  upon  him  was  a  sufficient 
punishment  for  his  sins  and  abundant  warning  for  others 
like-minded.  This  would  settle  all  difficulties  at  one  stroke 
and  definitely  lay  the  ghost  of  a  disagreeable  occurrence. 
The  solution  was  so  simple  that  he  marvelled  that  he  had 
not  thought  of  it  before. 

His  morning's  mail,  containing  one  or  two  very  unpleasant 
letters,  only  strengthened  his  determination.  He  lost  no 
time  in  carrying  it  out.  By  special  messenger  he  dispatched 
a  carefully  written  and  kindly  letter  to  Jones,  Senior.  Jones, 
Senior,  tore  it  across  the  middle  and  returned  it  by  the  same 
messenger.  He  then  informed  the  Chronicle  what  he  had 
done.  The  Chronicle  that  afternoon  shrieked  it  under  a  five- 
column  head,  together  with  a  ferocious  statement  from  Jones, 
Senior,  saying  that  he  would  rather  see  his  son  breaking  rocks 
in  the  road  than  a  student  in  such  a  college  as  Blaines  was, 
under  the  present  regime.  The  editor,  instead  of  seeing  in 
West's  letter  a  spontaneous  act  of  magnanimity  in  the  in 
terest  of  the  academic  uplift,  maliciously  twisted  it  into  a 
grudging  confession  of  error,  "unrelieved  by  the  grace  of 
manly  retraction  and  apology."  So  ran  the  editorial,  which 
was  offensively  headed  "West's  Fatal  Flop."  Some  of  the 
State  papers,  it  seemed  from  excerpts  printed  in  another 
column,  were  foolishly  following  the  Chronicle's  lead;  Re 
publican  cracker-box  orators  were  trying  somehow  to  make 
capital  of  the  thing;  and  altogether  there  was  a  very  un 
pleasant  little  mess,  which  showed  signs  of  developing 
rapidly  into  what  is  known  as  an  "issue." 

That  afternoon,  when  the  tempest  in  the  collegiate  tea- 


QUEED  231 

pot  was  storming  at  its  merriest,  West,  being  downtown  on 
private  business,  chanced  to  drop  in  at  the  Post  office,  ac 
cording  to  his  frequent  habit.  He  found  the  sanctum  under 
the  guard  of  the  young  assistant  editor.  The  Colonel,  in  fact, 
had  been  sick  in  bed  for  four  days,  and  in  his  absence,  Queed 
was  acting-editor  and  sole  contributor  of  the  leaded  minion. 
The  two  young  men  greeted  each  other  pleasantly. 

"  I  'm  reading  you  every  day,"  said  West,  presently,  "and, 
flattery  and  all  that  aside,  I  've  been  both  surprised  and 
delighted  at  the  character  of  the  work  you're  doing-  It's 
fully  up  to  the  best  traditions  of  the  Post,  and  that  strikes 
me  as  quite  a  feat  for  a  man  of  your  years." 

Because  he  was  pleased  at  this  tribute,  Queed  answered 
briefly,  and  at  once  changed  the  subject.  But  he  did  it  mala- 
droitly  by  expressing  the  hope  that  things  were  going  well 
with  Mr.  West. 

"Well,  not  hardly,"  said  West,  and  gave  his  pleasant  laugh. 
"  You  may  possibly  have  noticed  from  our  esteemed  afternoon 
contemporary  that  I'm  in  a  very  pretty  little  pickle.  But 
by  the  way,"  he  added,  with  entire  good  humor,  "the  Post 
does  n't  appear  to  have  noticed  it  after  all." 

"No,"  said  Queed,  slowly,  not  pretending  to  misunder 
stand.  He  hesitated,  a  rare  thing  with  him.  "The  fact  is  I 
could  not  write  what  you  would  naturally  wish  to  have 
written,  and  therefore  I  haven't  written  anything  at  all." 

West  threw  up  his  hands  in  mock  horror.  "Here's  an 
other  one!  Come  on,  fellers!  Kick  him!  —  he's  got  no 
friends!  You  know,"  he  laughed,  "I  remind  myself  of  the 
man  who  stuck  his  head  in  at  the  teller's  window,  wanting 
to  have  a  check  cashed.  The  teller  didn't  know  him  from 
Adam.  'Have  you  any  friends  here  in  the  city?'  asked  he. 
'Lord,  no!'  said  the  stranger;  'I'm  the  weather  man.'" 

Queed  smiled. 

'  *  And  I  was  only  trying  in  my  poor  way , ' '  said  West,  mourn 
fully,  "to  follow  the  advice  that  you,  young  man,  roared  at 
me  for  a  column  on  the  fatal  morning." 

"  I  Ve  regretted  that,"  said  Queed.  "Though,  of  course,  I 


232  QUEED 

never  looked  for  any  such  developments  as  this.  I  was 
merely  trying  to  act  on  Colonel  Cowles's  advice  about  always 
playing  up  local  topics.  You  are  doubtless  familiar  with  his 
dictum  that  the  people  are  far  more  interested  in  a  cat-fight 
at  Seventh  and  Centre  Streets  than  in  the  greatest  exploits 
of  science." 

West  laughed  and  rose  to  go.  Then  a  good-natured  thought 
struck  him.  "Look  here,"  said  he,  "this  must  be  a  great 
load,  with  the  Colonel  away — doing  all  of  three  columns  a 
day  by  yourself.  How  on  earth  do  you  manage  it?" 

"Well,  I  start  work  at  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning." 

"And  what  time  does  that  get  you  through?" 

"Usually  in  time  to  get  to  press  with  it." 

"Oh,  I  say!  That  won't  do  at  all.  You'll  break  yourself 
down,  playing  both  ends  against  the  middle  like  that.  Let 
me  help  you  out,  won't  you?  Let  me  do  something  for  you 
right  now?" 

"  If  you  really  feel  like  it,"  said  Queed,  remembering  how 
the  Colonel  welcomed  Mr.  West's  occasional  contributions 
to  his  columns,  "of  course  I  shall  be  glad  to  have  something 
from  you." 

"Why,  my  dear  fellow,  certainly!  Hand  me  some  copy- 
paper  there,  and  go  right  on  with  your  work  while  I  unbosom 
my  pent-up  Uticas." 

He  meditated  a  moment,  wrote  rapidly  for  half  an  hour, 
and  rose  with  a  hurried  glance  at  his  watch. 

"Here's  a  little  squib  about  the  college  that  may  serve  as 
a  space-filler.  I  must  fly  for  an  engagement.  I  '11  try  to  come 
down  to-morrow  afternoon  anyway,  and  if  you  need  any 
thing  to-night,  'phone  me.  Delighted  to  help  you  out." 

Queed  picked  up  the  scattered  sheets  and  read  them  over 
carefully.  He  found  that  Director  West  had  written  a  very 
able  defense,  and  whole-hearted  endorsement,  of  President 
West's  position  in  the  Blaines  College  hazing  affair. 

The  acting  editor  sat  for  some  time  in  deep  thought. 
Eighteen  months'  increasing  contact  with  Buck  Klinker  and 
other  men  of  action  had  somewhat  tamed  his  soaring  self- 


QUEED  233 

sufficiency.  He  was  not  nearly  so  sure  as  he  once  was  that 
he  knew  everything  there  was  to  know,  and  a  little  more  be 
sides.  West,  personally,  whom  he  saw  often,  he  had  gradu 
ally  come  to  admire  with  warmth.  By  slow  degrees  it 
came  to  him  that  the  popular  young  president  had  many 
qualities  of  a  very  desirable  sort  which  he  himself  lacked. 
West's  opinion  on  a  question  of  college  discipline  was  likely 
to  be  at  least  as  sound  as  his  own.  Moreover,  West  was  one 
of  the  owners  and  managers  of  the  Post. 

Nevertheless,  he,  Queed,  did  not  see  how  he  could  accept 
and  print  this  article. 

It  was  the  old-school  Colonel's  fundamental  axiom,  drilled 
into  and  fully  adopted  by  his  assistant,  that  the  editor  must 
be  personally  responsible  for  every  word  that  appeared 
in  his  columns.  Those  columns,  to  be  kept  pure,  must  re 
present  nothing  but  the  editor's  personal  views.  Therefore, 
on  more  than  one  occasion,  the  Colonel  had  refused  point- 
blank  to  prepare  articles  which  his  directors  wished  printed. 
He  always  accompanied  these  refusals  with  his  resignation, 
which  the  directors  invariably  returned  to  him,  thereby 
abandoning  their  point.  Queed  was  for  the  moment  editor 
in  the  Colonel's  stead.  Over  the  telephone,  Colonel  Cowles 
had  instructed  him,  four  days  before,  to  assume  full  respon 
sibility,  communicating  with  him  or  with  the  directors  if 
he  was  in  doubt,  but  standing  firmly  on  his  own  legs.  As  to 
where  those  legs  now  twitched  to  lead  him,  the  young  man 
could  have  no  doubt.  If  he  had  a  passion  in  his  scientist's 
bosom,  it  was  for  exact  and  unflinching  veracity.  Even  to 
keep  the  Post  silent  had  been  something  of  a  strain  upon  his 
instinct  for  truth,  for  a  voice  within  him  had  whispered  that 
an  honest  journal  ought  to  have  some  opinion  to  express  on 
a  matter  so  locally  interesting  as  this.  To  publish  this  edi 
torial  would  strain  the  instinct  to  the  breaking  point  and 
beyond.  For  it  would  be  equivalent  to  saying,  whether  any 
body  else  but  him  knew  it  or  not,  that]he,  the  present  editor 
of  the  Post  approved  and  endorsed  West's  position,  when  the 
truth  was  that  he  did  nothing  of  the  sort. 


234  QUEED 

At  eight  o'clock  that  night,  he  succeeded,  after  prolonged 
search  of  the  town  on  the  part  of  the  switchboard  boy,  in 
getting  West  to  the  telephone. 

"Mr.  West,"  said  Queed,  "I  am  very  sorry,  but  I  don't 
see  how  I  can  print  your  article." 

"  Oh,  Lord ! "  came  West's  untroubled  voice  back  over  the 
wire.  "And  a  man's  enemies  shall  be  those  of  his  own  house 
hold.  What's  wrong  with  it,  Mr.  Editor?" 

Queed  explained  his  reluctances.  "If  that  is  not  satis 
factory  to  you,"  he  added,  at  the  end,  "as  it  hardly  can  be, 
I  give  you  my  resignation  now,  and  you  yourself  can  take 
charge  immediately." 

"Bless  your  heart,  no!  Put  it  in  the  waste-basket.  It 
doesn't  make  a  kopeck's  worth  of  difference.  Here's  a 
thought,  though.  Do  you  approve  of  the  tactics  of  those 
Chronicle  fellows  in  the  matter?" 

"No,  I  do  not." 

"Well,  why  not  show  them  up  to-morrow?" 

"I '11  be  glad  to  do  it." 

So  Queed  wrote  a  stinging  little  article  of  a  couple  of  sticks' 
length,  holding  up  to  public  scorn  journalistic  redshirts  who 
curry-combed  the  masses,  and  preached  class  hatred  for  the 
money  there  was  in  it.  It  is  doubtful  if  this  article  helped 
matters  much.  For  the  shameless  Chronicle  seized  on  it  as 
showing  that  the  Post  had  tried  to  defend  the  president, 
and  utterly  failed.  "Even  the  West  organ,"  so  ran  its  brazen 
capitals,  "  does  not  dare  endorse  its  darling.  And  no  wonder, 
after  the  storm  of  indignation  aroused  by  the  Chronicle's 
fearless  exposures." 

West  kept  his  good  humor  and  self-control  intact,  but  it 
was  hardly  to  be  expected  that  he  enjoyed  venomous  mis 
representation  of  this  sort.  The  solidest  comfort  he  got  in 
these  days  came  from  Sharlee  Weyland,  who  did  not  read 
the  Chronicle,  and  was  most  beautifully  confident  that  what 
ever  he  had  done  was  right.  But  after  all,  the  counselings  of 
Miss  Avery,  of  whom  he  also  saw  much  that  spring,  better 
suited  his  disgruntled  humor. 


QUEED  235 

"They  are  incapable  of  appreciating  you,"  said  she,  a 
siren  in  the  red  motor.  "You  owe  it  to  yourself  to  enter  a 
larger  field.  And" — so  ran  the  languorous  voice  —  "to 
your  friends." 

The  trustees  met  on  Saturday,  with  the  Chronicle  still 
pounding  away  with  deadly  regularity.  Its  editorial  of  the 
afternoon  before  was  entitled, ' '  We  Want  A  College  President 
—  Not  A  Class  President,"  and  had  frankly  urged  the  trus 
tees  of  old  Blaines  to  consider  whether  a  change  of  admin 
istration  was  not  advisable.  This  was  advice  which  some 
of  the  trustees  were  only  too  ready  to  follow.  James  E. 
Winter,  coming  armed  cap-a-pie  to  the  meeting,  suggested 
that  Mr.  West  withdraw  for  a  time,  which  Mr.  West  pro 
perly  declined  to  do.  The  implacable  insurgent  there 
upon  launched  into  a  bitter  face-to-face  denunciation  of 
the  president's  conduct  in  the  hazing  affair,  outpacing  the 
Chronicle  by  intimating,  too  plainly  for  courtesy,  that  the 
president's  conduct  toward  Jones  was  characterized  by 
duplicity,  if  not  wanting  in  consistent  adherence  to  veracity. 
"I  had  a  hard  time  to  keep  from  hitting  him,"  said  West 
afterwards,  "but  I  knew  that  would  be  the  worst  thing 
I  could  possibly  do."  "  Maybe  so,"  sighed  Mr.  Fyne,  appar 
ently  not  with  full  conviction.  Winter  went  too  far  in  mov 
ing  that  the  president's  continuance  in  office  was  prej  udicial 
to  the  welfare  of  Blaines  College,  and  was  defeated  9  to  3. 
Nevertheless,  West  always  looked  back  at  this  meeting  as 
one  of  the  most  unpleasant  incidents  in  his  life.  He  flung 
out  of  it  humiliated,  angry,  and  thoroughly  sick  at  heart. 

West  saw  himself  as  a  persecuted  patriot,  who  had  laid  a 
costly  oblation  on  the  altar  of  public  spirit  only  to  see  the  base 
crowd  jostle  forward  and  spit  upon  it.  He  was  poor  in  this 
world's  goods.  It  had  cost  him  five  thousand  a  year  to 
accept  the  presidency  of  Blaines  College.  And  this  was  how 
they  rewarded  him.  To  him,  as  he  sat  long  in  his  office  brood 
ing  upon  the  darkness  of  life,  there  came  a  visitor,  a  tall, 
angular,  twinkling-eyed,  slow-speaking  individual  who  per 
petually  chewed  an  unligh ted  cigar .  He  was  Plo nny  Neal ,  no 


236  QUEED 

other,  the  reputed  great  chieftain  of  city  politics.  Once  the 
Post,  in  an  article  inspired  by  West,  had  referred  to  Plonny 
as  "this  notorious  grafter."  Plonny  could  hardly  have  con 
sidered  this  courteous ;  but  he  was  a  man  who  never  remem 
bered  a  grudge,  until  ready  to  pay  it  back  with  compound 
interest.  West's  adolescent  passion  for  the  immediate 
reform  of  politics  had  long  since  softened,  and  nowadays 
when  the  whirligig  of  affairs  threw  the  two  men  together,  as 
it  did  not  infrequently,  they  met  on  the  easiest  and  friend 
liest  terms.  West  liked  Plonny,  as  everybody  did,  and  of 
Plonny's  sincere  liking  for  him  he  never  had  the  slightest 
doubt. 

In  fact,  Mr.  Neat's  present  call  was  to  report  that  the  man 
ner  in  which  a  lady  brushes  a  midge  from  her  summering 
brow  was  no  simpler  than  the  wiping  of  James  E.  Winter  off 
the  board  of  Blaines  College. 

That  topic  being  disposed  of,  West  introduced  another. 

"  Noticed  the  way  the  Chronicle  is  jumping  on  me  with  all 
four  feet,  Plonny?"  he  asked,  with  rather  a  forced  laugh. 
"Why  can't  those  fellows  forget  it  and  leave  me  alone?" 

By  a  slow  facial  manoeuvre,  Mr.  Neal  contrived  to  make 
his  cigar  look  out  upon  the  world  with  contemptuousness 
unbearable. 

"Why,  nobody  pays  no  attention  to  them  fellers1  wind, 
Mr.  West.  You  could  buy  them  off  for  a  hundred  dollars, 
ten  dollars  down,  and  have  them  praising  you  three  times 
a  week  for  two  hundred  dollars,  twenty-five  dollars  down. 
I  only  take  the  paper,"  said  Mr.  Neal,  "because  their  Sun 
day  is  mighty  convenient  f'r  packin'  furniture  f'r  shipment." 

The  Chronicle  was  the  only  paper  Mr.  Neal  ever  thought  of 
reading,  and  this  was  how  he  stabbed  it  in  the  back. 

"  I  don't  want  to  butt  in,  Mr.  West," said  he,  rising,  "and 
you  can  stop  me  if  I  am,  but  as  a  friend  of  yours  —  why  are 
you  botherin'  yourself  at  all  with  this  here  kid's-size  pro 
position?" 

"What  kid's-size  proposition?" 

"This  little  two-by-twice  grammar  school  that  tries  to 


QUEED  237 

pass  itself  off  for  a  college.  And  you  ain't  even  boss  of  it  at 
that!  You  got  a  gang  of  mossbacks  sitting  on  your  head  who 
don't  get  a  live  idea  among  'em  wunst  a  year.  Why,  the  arch 
angel  Gabriel  would  n't  have  a  show  with  a  lot  of  corpses 
like  them!  Of  course  it  ain't  my  business  to  give  advice  to  a 
man  like  you,  and  I  'm  probably  offendin'  you  sayin'  this, 
but  someway  you  don't  seem  to  see  what's  so  plain  to 
everybody  else.  It's  your  modesty  keeps  you  blind,  I  guess. 
But  here's  what  I  don't  see:  why  don't  you  come  out  of  this 
little  hole  in  the  ground  and  get  in  line?" 

"Inline?" 

"You're  dead  and  buried  here.  Now  you  mention  the 
Evening  Windbag  that  nobody  pays  no  more  attention  to 
than  kids  yelling  in  the  street.  How  about  having  a  paper 
of  your  own  some  day,  to  express  your  own  ideas  and  get 
things  done,  big  things,  the  way  you  want  'em?" 

"You  mean  the  Post?" 

"Well,  the  editor  of  the  Post  certainly  would  be  in  line, 
whereas  the  president  of  Blaines  Grammar  School  certainly 
ain't." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  in  line,  Plonny?" 

Mr.  Neal  invested  his  cigar  with  an  enigmatic  significance. 
"I  might  mean  one  thing  and  I  might  mean  another.  I 
s'pose  you  never  give  a  thought  to  poltix,  did  you?" 

"Well,  in  a  general  way  I  have  thought  of  it  sometimes." 

"Think  of  it  some  more,"  said  Mr.  Neal,  from  the  door. 
"I  see  a  kind  of  shake-up  comin'.  People  say  I've  got  in- 
floonce  in  poltix,  and  sort  of  help  to  run  things.  Of  course 
it  ain't  so.  I've  got  no  more  infloonce  than  what  my  ballot 
gives  me,  and  my  takin'  an  intelligent  public  interest  in 
what's  goin'  on.  But  it  looks  to  an  amatoor  like  the  people 
are  gettin'  tired  of  this  ring-rule  they  been  givin'  us,  and  're 
goin'  to  rise  in  their  majesty  pretty  soon,  and  fill  the  offices 
with  young  progressive  men  who  never  heeled  f'r  the  or 
ganization." 

He  went  away,  leaving  the  young  president  of  Blaines 
vastly  cheered.  Certainly  no  language  could  have  made 


238  QUEED 

Neal's  meaning  any  plainer.  He  had  come  to  tell  West  that, 
if  he  would  only  consent  to  get  in  line,  he,  great  Neal,  de 
sired  to  put  him  in  high  office  —  doubtless  the  Mayoralty, 
which  in  all  human  probability  meant  the  Governorship 
four  years  later. 

West  sat  long  in  rapt  meditation.  He  marveled  at  him 
self  for  having  ever  accepted  his  present  position.  Its  lim 
itations  were  so  narrow  and  so  palpable,  its  possibilities  were 
so  restricted,  its  complacent  provincialism  so  glaring,  that 
the  imaginative  glories  with  which  he  had  once  enwrapped 
it  seemed  now  simply  grotesque.  As  long  as  he  remained, 
he  was  an  entombed  nonentity.  Beyond  the  college  walls, 
out  of  the  reach  of  the  contemptible  bigotry  of  the  trustees 
of  this  world,  the  people  were  calling  for  him.  He  could  be 
the  new  type  of  public  servant,  the  clean,  strong,  fearless, 
idolized  young  Moses,  predestined  to  lead  a  tired  people 
into  the  promised  land  of  political  purity.  Once  more  a 
white  meadow  of  eager  faces  rolled  out  before  the  eye  of  his 
mind;  and  this  time,  from  the  buntinged  hustings,  he  did 
not  extol  learning  with  classic  periods,  but  excoriated  polit 
ical  dishonesty  in  red-hot  phrases  which  jerked  the  throngs 
to  their  feet,  frenzied  with  ardor.  .  .  . 

And  it  was  while  he  was  still  in  this  vein  of  thought,  as  it 
happened,  that  Colonel  Cowles,  at  eleven  o'clock  on  the  first 
night  of  June,  dropped  dead  in  his  bathroom,  and  left  the 
Post  without  an  editor. 


XIX 

The  Little  House  on  Duke  of  Gloucester  Street;  and  the  Begin 
ning  of  Various  Feelings,  Sensibilities,  and  Attitudes  between 
two  Lonely  Men. 

ONE  instant  thought  the  news  of  the  Colonel's  death 
struck  from  nearly  everybody's  mind :  He '//  miss  the 
Reunion.  For  within  a  few  days  the  city  was  to  wit 
ness  that  yearly  gathering  of  broken  armies  which,  of  all  as 
semblages  among  men,  the  Colonel  had  loved  most  dearly. 
In  thirty  years,  he  had  not  missed  one,  till  now.  They  buried 
the  old  warrior  with  pomp  and  circumstance,  not  to  speak  of 
many  tears,  and  his  young  assistant  in  the  sanctum  came 
home  from  the  graveside  with  a  sense  of  having  lost  a  valued 
counselor  and  friend.  Only  the  home  to  which  the  assistant 
returned  with  this  feeling  was  not  the  Third  Hall  Back  of 
Mrs.  Paynter's,  sometimes  known  as  the  Scriptorium,  but  a 
whole  suite  of  pleasant  rooms,  upstairs  and  down,  in  a  nice 
little  house  on  Duke  of  Gloucester  Street.  For  Nicolovius 
had  made  his  contemplated  move  on  the  first  of  May,  and 
Queed  had  gone  with  him. 

It  was  half-past  six  o'clock  on  a  pretty  summer's  evening. 
Queed  opened  the  house-door  with  a  latch-key  and  went  up 
stairs  to  the  comfortable  living-room,  which  faithfully  re 
produced  the  old  professor's  sitting-room  at  Mrs.  Payn 
ter's.  Nicolovius,  in  his  black  silk  cap,  was  sitting  near  the 
open  window,  reading  and  smoking  a  strong  cigarette. 

"Ah,  here  you  are!  I  was  just  thinking  that  you  were 
rather  later  than  usual  this  evening." 

"  Yes,  I  went  to  Colonel  Cowles's  funeral.  It  was  decidedly 
impressive." 

"Ah!" 

Queed  dropped  down  into  one  of  Nicolovius's  agreeable 


240  QTJEED 

chairs  and  let  his  eyes  roam  over  the  room.  He  was  ex 
tremely  comfortable  in  this  house ;  a  little  too  comfortable,  he 
was  beginning  to  think  now,  considering  that  he  paid  but  seven 
dollars  and  fifty  cents  a  week  towards  its  support.  He  had  a  desk 
and  lamp  all  his  own  in  the  living-room,  a  table  and  lamp  in 
his  bedroom,  ease  and  independence  over  two  floors.  An 
old  negro  man  looked  after  the  two  gentlemen  and  gave 
them  excellent  things  to  eat.  The  house  was  an  old  one,  and 
small ;  it  was  in  an  unfashionable  part  of  town,  and  having 
stood  empty  for  some  time,  could  be  had  for  thirty-five  dollars 
a  month.  However,  Nicolovius  had  wiped  out  any  economy 
here  by  spending  his  money  freely  to  repair  and  beautify. 
He  had  had  workmen  in  the  house  for  a  month,  papering, 
painting,  plumbing,  and  altering. 

"Dozens  of  people  could  not  get  in  the  church,"  said 
Queed.  "They  stood  outside  in  the  street  till  the  service 
was  over." 

Nicolovius  was  looking  out  of  the  window,  and  answered 
casually.  "I  daresay  he  was  an  excellent  man  according  to 
his  lights." 

"Coming  to  know  him  very  well  in  the  past  year,  I 
found  that  his  lights  stood  high." 

"As  high,  I  am  sure,  as  the  environment  in  which  he  was 
born  and  raised  made  possible." 

"You  have  a  low  opinion,  then,  of  ante-bellum  civilization 
in  the  South?" 

"Who  that  knows  his  history  could  have  otherwise?" 

"You  know  history,  I  admit,"  said  Queed,  lightly  falling 
upon  the  side  issue,  "surprisingly,  indeed,  considering  that 
you  have  not  read  it  for  so  many  years." 

"A  man  is  not  likely  to  forget  truths  burned  into  him  when 
he  is  young." 

"Everything  depends,"  said  Queed,  returning  to  his 
muttons,  "upon  how  you  are  going  to  appraise  a  civiliza 
tion.  If  the  only  true  measure  is  economic  efficiency,  no  one 
can  question  that  the  old  Southern  system  was  one  of  the 
worst  ever  conceived." 


QUEED  241 

"Can  you,  expert  upon  organized  society  as  you  are,  ad 
mit  any  doubts  upon  that  point?" 

"I  am  admitting  doubts  upon  a  good  many  points  these 
days." 

Nicolovius  resumed  his  cigarette.  Talk  languished.  Both 
men  enjoyed  a  good  silence.  Many  a  supper  they  ate  through 
without  a  word.  The  old  man's  attitude  toward  the  young 
one  was  charming.  He  had  sloughed  off  some  of  the  too 
polished  blandness  of  his  manner,  and  now  offered  a  simpler 
meeting  ground  of  naturalness  and  kindliness.  They  had 
shared  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  Street  roof-tree  for  a  month, 
but  Queed  did  not  yet  accept  it  as  a  matter  of  course.  He 
was  decidedly  more  prone  to  be  analytical  than  he  had  been 
a  year  ago.  Yet  whatever  could  be  urged  against  it,  the  little 
house  was  in  one  way  making  a  subtle  tug  upon  his  regard ; 
it  was  the  nearest  thing  to  a  home  that  he  had  ever  had  in  his 
life,  or  was  ever  likely  to  have. 

"  And  when  will  the  Post  directors  meet  to  choose  his  suc 
cessor?" 

"I  haven't  heard.   Very  soon,  I  should  think." 

"  It  is  certain,  I  suppose,"  said  Nicolovius,  "that  they  will 
name  you?" 

"Oh,  not  at  all  —  by  no  means!  I  am  merely  receptive, 
that  is  all." 

Queed  glanced  at  his  watch  and  rose.  "There  is  half 
an  hour  before  supper,  I  see.  I  think  I  must  turn  it  to  ac 
count." 

Nicolovius  looked  regretful.  "Why  not  allow  yourself  this 
minute's  rest,  and  me  the  pleasure  of  your  society?" 

Queed  hesitated.  "No  —  I  think  my  duty  is  to  my  work." 

He  passed  into  the  adjoining  room,  which  was  his  bed 
room,  and  shut  the  door.  Here  at  his  table,  he  passed  all 
of  the  hours  that  he  spent  in  the  house,  except  after  supper, 
when  he  did  his  work  in  the  sitting-room  with  Nicolovius. 
He  felt  that,  in  honor,  he  owed  some  companionship,  of  the 
body  at  least,  to  the  old  man  in  exchange  for  the  run  of  the 
house,  and  his  evenings  were  his  conscientious  concession 


242  QUEED 

to  his  social  duty.  But  sometimes  he  felt  the  surprising  and 
wholly  irrational  impulse  to  concede  more,  to  give  the  old 
man  a  larger  measure  of  society  than  he  was,  so  to  say, 
paying  for.  He  felt  it  now  as  he  seated  himself  methodically 
and  opened  his  table  drawer. 

From  a  purely  selfish  point  of  view,  which  was  the  only 
point  of  view  from  which  such  a  compact  need  be  considered, 
he  could  hardly  think  that  his  new  domestic  arrangement 
was  a  success.  Greater  comforts  he  had,  of  course,  but  it 
is  not  upon  comforts  that  the  world's  work  hangs.  The 
important  facts  were  that  he  was  paying  as  much  as  he 
had  paid  at  Mrs.  Paynter's,  and  was  enjoying  rather  less 
privacy.  He  and  Nicolovius  were  friends  of  convenience 
only.  Yet  somehow  the  old  professor  managed  to  obtrude 
himself  perpetually  upon  his  consciousness.  The  young  man 
began  to  feel  an  annoying  sense  of  personal  responsibility 
toward  him,  an  impulse  which  his  reason  rejected  utterly. 

He  was  aware  that,  personally,  he  wished  himself  back  at 
Mrs.  Paynter's  and  the  Scriptorium.  A  free  man,  in  pos 
session  of  this  knowledge,  would  immediately  pack  up  and 
return.  But  that  was  just  the  trouble.  He  who  had  always, 
hitherto,  been  the  freest  man  in  the  world,  appeared  no 
longer  to  be  free.  He  was  aware  that  he  would  find  it 
very  difficult  to  walk  into  the  sitting-room  at  this  moment, 
and  tell  Nicolovius  that  he  was  going  to  leave.  The  old 
man  would  probably  make  a  scene.  The  irritating  thing 
about  it  was  that  Nicolovius,  being  as  solitary  in  the  great 
world  as  he  himself,  actually  minded  his  isolation,  and  was 
apparently  coming  to  depend  upon  him. 

But  after  all,  he  was  contented  here,  and  his  work  was 
prospering  largely.  The  days  of  his  preparation  for  his  Post 
labors  were  definitely  over.  He  no  longer  had  to  read  or  study ; 
he  stood  upon  his  feet,  and  carried  his  editorial  qualifica 
tions  under  his  hat.  His  duties  as  assistant  editor  occupied 
him  but  four  or  five  hours  a  day;  some  three  hours  a  day  — 
the  allotment  was  inexact,  for  the  Schedule  had  lost  its 
first  rigid  precision  —  to  the  Sciences  of  Physical  Cul- 


QUEED  243 

ture  and  Human  Intercourse;  all  the  rest  to  the  Science 
of  Sciences.  Glorious  mornings,  and  hardly  less  glorious 
nights,  he  gave,  day  after  day,  week  after  week,  to  the  great 
book;  and  because  of  his  astonishingly  enhanced  vitality, 
he  made  one  hour  tell  now  as  an  hour  and  a  half  had  told  in 
the  period  of  the  establishment  of  the  Scriptorium. 

And  now,  without  warning  and  prematurely,  the  jade 
Fortune  had  pitched  a  bomb  at  this  new  Revised  Schedule 
of  his,  leaving  him  to  decide  whether  he  would  patch  up  the 
pieces  or  not.  And  he  had  decided  that  he  would  not  patch 
them  up.  Colonel  Cowles  was  dead.  The  directors  of  the 
Post  might  choose  him  to  succeed  the  Colonel,  or  they  might 
not.  But  if  they  did  choose  him,  he  had  finally  made  up  his 
mind  that  he  would  accept  the  election. 

In  his  attitude  toward  the  newspaper,  Queed  was  some 
thing  like  those  eminent  fellow-scientists  of  his  who  have  set 
out  to  "expose"  spiritualism  and  "the  occult,"  and  have 
ended  as  the  most  gullible  customers  of  the  most  dubious 
of  "mediums."  The  idea  of  being  editor  for  its  own  sake, 
which  he  had  once  jeered  and  flouted,  he  had  gradually 
come  to  consider  with  large  respect.  The  work  drew  him 
amazingly ;  it  was  applied  science  of  a  peculiarly  fascinating 
sort.  And  in  the  six  days  of  the  Colonel's  illness  in  May, 
when  he  had  full  charge  of  the  editorial  page  —  and  again 
now  —  he  had  an  exhilarating  consciousness  of  personal 
power  which  lured  him,  oddly,  more  than  any  sensation  he 
had  ever  had  in  his  life. 

No  inducements  of  this  sort,  alone,  could  ever  have  drawn 
him  from  his  love.  However,  his  love  was  safe,  in  any  case. 
If  they  made  him  editor,  they  would  give  him  an  assistant. 
He  would  keep  his  mornings  for  himself — four  hours  a 
day.  In  the  long  vigil  last  night,  he  had  threshed  the  whole 
thing  out.  On  a  four-hour  schedule  he  could  finish  his  book 
in  four  years  and  a  half  more:  —  an  unprecedentedly  early 
age  to  have  completed  so  monumental  a  work.  And  who 
could  say  that  in  thus  making  haste  slowly,  he  would  not 
have  acquired  a  breadth  of  outlook,  and  closer  knowledge 


244  QUEED 

of  the  practical  conditions  of  life,  which  would  be  advan 
tageously  reflected  in  the  Magnum  Opus  itself? 

The  young  man  sat  at  his  table,  the  sheaf  of  yellow  sheets 
which  made  up  the  chapter  he  was  now  working  on  ready 
under  his  hand.  Around  him  were  his  reference  books,  his 
note-books,  his  pencils  and  erasers,  all  the  neat  parapher 
nalia  of  his  trade.  Everything  was  in  order;  yet  he  touched 
none  of  them.  Presently  his  eyes  fell  upon  his  open  watch, 
and  his  mind  went  off  into  new  channels,  or  rather  into  old 
channels  which  he  thought  he  had  abandoned  for  this  half- 
hour  at  any  rate.  In  five  minutes  more,  he  put  away  his 
manuscript,  picked  up  his  watch,  and  strolled  back  into  the 
sitting-room. 

Nicolovius  was  sitting  where  he  had  left  him,  except  that 
now  he  was  not  reading  but  merely  staring  out  of  the  win 
dow.  He  glanced  around  with  a  look  of  pleased  surprise  and 
welcome. 

"Ah-h!  Did  genius  fail  to  burn?"  he  asked,  employing  a 
bromidic  phrase  which  Queed  particularly  detested. 

"That  is  one  way  of  putting  it,  I  suppose." 

"Or  did  you  take  pity  on  my  solitariness?  You  must  not 
let  me  become  a  drag  upon  you." 

Queed,  dropping  into  a  chair,  rather  out  of  humor,  made  no 
reply.  Nicolovius  continued  to  look  out  of  the  window. 

"I  see  in  the  Post"  he  presently  began  again,  "that 
Colonel  Cowles,  after  getting  quite  well,  broke  himself  down 
again  in  preparing  for  the  so-called  Reunion.  It  seems  rather 
hard  to  have  to  give  one's  life  for  such  a  rabble  of  beggars." 

"That  is  how  you  regard  the  veterans,  is  it?" 

"Have  you  ever  seen  the  outfit?" 

"Never." 

"  I  have  lived  here  long  enough  to  learn  something  of  them. 
Look  at  them  for  yourself  next  week.  Mix  with  them.  Talk 
with  them.  You  will  find  them  worth  a  study  —  and  worth 
nothing  else  under  the  sun." 

"  I  have  been  looking  forward  to  doing  something  of  that 
sort,"  said  Queed,  introspectively. 


QUEED  245 

Had  not  Miss  Weyland,  the  last  time  he  had  seen  her 
—  namely,  one  evening  about  two  months  before,  —  ex 
pressly  invited  him  to  come  and  witness  the  Reunion 
parade  from  her  piazza? 

"You  will  see,"  said  Nicolovius,  in  his  purring  voice,  "a 
lot  of  shabby  old  men,  outside  and  in,  who  never  did  an 
honest  day's  work  in  their  lives." 

He  paused,  finished  his  cigarette  and  suavely  resumed: 

"They  went  to  war  as  young  men,  because  it  promised  to 
be  more  exciting  than  pushing  a  plow  over  a  worn-out  hill 
side.  Or  because  there  was  nothing  else  to  do.  Or  because 
they  were  conscripted  and  kicked  into  it.  They  came  out 
of  the  war  the  most  invincible  grafters  in  history.  The  shift 
less  boor  of  a  stable-boy  found  himself  transformed  into  a 
shining  hero,  and  he  meant  to  lie  back  and  live  on  it  for  the 
rest  of  his  days.  Be  assured  that  he  understood  very  well  the 
cash  value  of  his  old  uniform.  If  he  had  a  peg-leg  or  an 
empty  sleeve,  so  much  the  more  impudently  could  he  pass 
around  his  property  cap.  For  forty  years,  he  and  his  men 
dicant  band  have  been  a  cursed  albatross  hung  around  the 
necks  of  their  honest  fellows.  Able-bodied  men,  they  have 
lolled  back  and  eaten  up  millions  of  dollars,  belonging  to  a 
State  which  they  pretend  to  love  and  which,  as  they  well  know, 
has  needed  every  penny  for  the  desperate  struggle  of  exist 
ence.  Since  the  political  party  which  dominates  this  State  is 
too  cowardly  to  tell  them  to  go  to  work  or  go  to  the  devil, 
it  will  be  a  God's  mercy  when  the  last  one  of  them  is  in  his 
grave.  You  may  take  my  word  for  that." 

But  Queed,  being  a  scientist  by  passion,  never  took  any 
body's  word  for  anything.  He  always  went  to  the  original 
sources  of  information,  and  found  out  for  himself.  It  was  a 
year  now  since  he  had  begun  saturating  himself  in  the  annals 
of  the  State  and  the  South,  and  he  had  scoured  the  field  so 
effectually  that  Colonel  Cowles  himself  had  been  known  to 
appeal  to  him  on  a  point  of  history,  though  the  Colonel  had 
forty  years'  start  on  him,  and  had  himself  helped  to  make 
that  history. 


246  QUEED 

Therefore  Queed  knew  that  Nicolovius,  by  taking  the  case 
of  one  soldier  in  ten,  perhaps,  or  twenty  or  fifty,  and  offering 
it  as  typical  of  the  whole,  was  bitterly  caricaturing  history ; 
and  he  wondered  why  in  the  world  the  old  man  cared  to  do  it. 

"My  own  reading  of  the  recent  history  of  the  South," 
said  Queed,  "can  hardly  sustain  such  a  view." 

"You  have  only  to  read  further  to  be  convinced." 

"But  I  thought  you  yourself  never  read  recent  history." 

Nicolovius  flung  him  a  sharp  look,  which  the  young  man, 
staring  thoughtfully  at  the  floor,  missed.  The  old  professor 
laughed. 

"My  dear  boy!  I  read  it  on  the  lips  of  Major  Brooke,  I 
read  it  daily  in  the  newspapers,  I  read  it  in  such  articles  as 
your  Colonel  Cowles  wrote  about  this  very  Reunion.  I  can 
not  get  away  from  history  in  the  making,  if  I  would.  Ah, 
there  is  the  supper  bell  —  I  'm  quite  ready  for  it,  too.  Let 
us  go  down." 

They  went  down  arm  in  arm.  On  the  stairs  Nicolovius 
said:  "These  Southern  manifestations  interest  me  because, 
though  extreme,  they  are  after  all  so  absurdly  typical  of  hu 
man  nature.  I  have  even  seen  the  same  sort  of  thing  in  my 
own  land." 

Queed,  though  he  knew  the  history  of  Ireland  very  well, 
could  not  recall  any  parallel  to  the  United  Confederate 
Veterans  in  the  annals  of  that  country.  Still,  a  man  capable 
of  distorting  history  as  Nicolovius  distorted  it  could  always 
find  a  parallel  to  anything  anywhere. 

When  the  meal  was  about  half  over,  Queed  said :  — 

"You  slept  badly  last  night,  did  n't  you?" 

"Yes  —  my  old  enemy.  The  attack  soon  passed.  How 
ever,  you  may  be  sure  that  it  is  a  comfort  at  such  times  to 
know  that  I  am  not  alone." 

"  If  you  should  need  any  —  ahem  —  assistance,  I  assume 
that  you  will  call  me,"  said  Queed,  after  a  pause. 

"Thank  you.  You  can  hardly  realize  what  your  presence 
here,  your  companionship  and,  I  hope  I  may  say,  your 
friendship,  mean  to  me." 


QUEED  247 

Queed  glanced  at  him  over  the  table,  and  hastily  turned 
his  glance  away.  He  had  surprised  Nicolovius  looking  at 
him  with  a  curiously  tender  look  in  his  black  diamond  eyes. 

The  young  man  went  to  the  office  that  night,  worried  by 
two  highly  irritating  ideas.  One  was  that  Nicolovius  was 
most  unjustifiably  permitting  himself  to  become  dependent 
upon  him.  The  other  was  that  it  was  very  peculiar  that 
a  Fenian  refugee  should  care  to  express  slanderous  views 
of  the  soldiers  of  a  Lost  Cause.  Both  thoughts,  once  intro 
duced  into  the  young  man's  mind,  obstinately  stuck  there. 


XX 

Meeting  of  the  Post  Directors  to  elect  a  Successor  to  Colonel 
Cowles;  Charles  Gardiner  West's  Sensible  Remarks  on  Mr. 
Queed;  Mr.  West's  Resignation  from  Old  Blaines  College, 
and  New  Consecration  to  the  Uplift. 

THE  Post  directors  gathered  in  special  meeting  oi> 
Monday.  Their  first  act  was  to  adopt  some  beauti 
ful  resolutions,  prepared  by  Charles  Gardiner  West,  in 
memory  of  the  editor  who  had  served  the  paper  so  long  and 
so  well.  Next  they  changed  the  organization  of  the  staff, 
splitting  the  late  Colonel's  heavy  duties  in  two,  by  creating 
the  separate  position  of  managing  editor;  this  official  to 
have  complete  authority  over  the  news  department  of  the 
paper,  as  the  editor  had  over  its  editorial  page.  The  directors 
named  Evan  Montague,  the  able  city  editor  of  the  Post,  to 
fill  the  new  position,  while  promoting  the  strongest  of  the 
reporters  to  fill  the  city  desk. 

The  chairman,  Stewart  Byrd,  then  announced  that  he 
was  ready  to  receive  nominations  for,  or  hear  discussion 
about,  the  editorship. 

One  of  the  directors,  Mr.  Hopkins,  observed  that,  as  he 
viewed  it,  the  directors  should  not  feel  restricted  to  local 
timber  in  the  choice  of  a  successor  to  the  Colonel.  He  said 
that  the  growing  importance  of  the  Post  entitled  it  to  an 
editor  of  the  first  ability,  and  that  the  directors  should  find 
such  a  one,  whether  in  New  York,  or  Boston,  or  San  Fran 
cisco. 

Another  director,  Mr.  Boggs,  remarked  that  it  did  not 
necessarily  follow  that  a  thoroughly  suitable  man  must  be 
a  New  York,  Boston,  or  San  Francisco  man.  Unless  he  was 
greatly  deceived,  there  was  an  eminently  suitable  man,  not 
merely  in  the  city,  but  in  the  office  of  the  Post,  where,  since 


QUEED  249 

Colonel  Cowles's  death,  he  was  doing  fourteen  hours  of  ex 
cellent  work  per  day  for  the  sum  of  fifteen  hundred  dollars 
per  annum. 

"Mr.  Boggs's  point,"  said  Mr.  Hickok,  a  third  director, 
who  looked  something  like  James  E.  Winter,  "is  exceedingly 
well  taken.  A  United  States  Senator  from  a  Northern  State 
is  a  guest  in  my  house  for  Reunion  week.  The  Senator  reads 
the  editorials  in  the  Post  with  marked  attention,  has  asked 
me  the  name  of  the  writer,  and  has  commended  some  of  his 
utterances  most  highly.  The  Senator  tells  me  that  he  never 
reads  the  editorials  in  his  own  paper  —  a  Boston  paper, 
Mr.  Hopkins,  by  the  bye  —  his  reason  being  that  they  are 
never  worth  reading." 

Mr.  Shorter  and  Mr.  Porter,  fourth  and  fifth  directors, 
were  much  struck  with  Mr.  Hickok's  statement.  They 
averred  that  they  had  made  a  point  of  reading  the  Post 
editorials  during  the  Colonel's  absence,  with  a  view  to  sizing 
up  the  assistant,  and  had  been  highly  pleased  with  the  char 
acter  of  his  work. 

Mr.  Wilmerding,  a  sixth  director,  declared  that  the  Colonel 
had,  in  recent  months,  more  than  once  remarked  to  him  that 
the  young  man  wras  entirely  qualified  to  be  his  successor. 
In  fact,  the  Colonel  had  once  said  that  he  meant  to  retire 
before  a  great  while,  and,  of  course  with  the  directors'  ap 
proval,  turn  over  the  editorial  helm  to  the  assistant.  There 
fore,  he,  Mr.  Wilmerding,  had  pleasure  in  nominating  Mr. 
Queed  for  the  position  of  editor  of  the  Post. 

Mr.  Shorter  and  Mr.  Porter  said  that  they  had  pleasure 
in  seconding  this  nomination. 

Mr.  Charles  Gardiner  West,  a  seventh  director,  was 
recognized  for  a  few  remarks.  Mr.  West  expressed  his  in 
tense  gratification  over  what  had  been  said  in  eulogy  of 
Mr.  Queed.  This  gratification,  some  might  argue,  was  not 
wholly  disinterested,  since  it  was  Mr.  West  who  had  dis 
covered  Mr.  Queed  and  sent  him  to  the  Post.  To  praise  the 
able  editor  was  therefore  to  praise  the  alert,  watchful,  and 
discriminating  director.  (Smiles.)  Seriously,  Mr.  Queed's 


250  QUEED 

work,  especially  during  the  last  few  months,  had  been  of  the 
highest  order,  and  Mr.  West,  having  worked  beside  him  more 
than  once,  ventured  to  say  that  he  appreciated  his  valuable 
qualities  better  than  any  other  director.  If  the  Colonel 
had  but  lived  a  year  or  two  longer,  there  could  not,  in  his 
opinion,  be  the  smallest  question  as  to  what  step  the  honor 
able  directors  should  now  take.  But  as  it  was,  Mr.  West,  as 
Mr.  Queed's  original  sponsor  on  the  Post,  felt  it  his  duty  to 
call  attention  to  two  things.  The  first  was  the  young  man's 
extreme  youth.  The  second  was  the  fact  that  he  was  a 
stranger  to  the  State,  having  lived  there  less  than  two  years. 
At  his  present  rate  of  progress,  it  was  of  course  patent  to  any 
observer  that  he  was  a  potential  editor  of  the  Post,  and  a  great 
one.  But  might  it  not  be,  on  the  whole,  desirable  —  Mr.  West 
merely  suggested  the  idea  in  the  most  tentative  way,  and 
wholly  out  of  his  sense  of  sponsorship  for  Mr.  Queed  —  to 
give  him  a  little  longer  chance  to  grow  and  broaden  and 
learn,  before  throwing  the  highest  responsibility  and  the 
final  honors  upon  him? 

Mr.  West's  graceful  and  sensible  remarks  made  a  distinct 
impression  upon  the  directors,  and  Mr.  Hopkins  took  occa 
sion  to  say  that  it  was  precisely  such  thoughts  as  these  that 
had  led  him  to  suggest  looking  abroad  for  a  man.  Mr.  Shorter 
and  Mr.  Porter  asserted  that  they  would  deprecate  doing 
anything  that  Mr.  West,  with  his  closer  knowledge  of  actual 
conditions,  thought  premature.  Mr.  Boggs  admitted  that 
the  ability  to  write  editorials  of  the  first  order  was  not  all 
that  should  be  required  of  the  editor  of  the  Post.  It  might 
be  doubtful,  thought  he,  whether  so  young  a  man  could 
represent  the  Post  properly  on  occasions  of  a  semi-public 
nature,  or  in  emergency  situations  such  as  occasionally 
arose  in  an  editorial  office. 

Mr.  Wilmerding  inquired  the  young  man's  age,  and  upon 
being  told  that  he  was  under  twenty-six,  remarked  that  only 
very  exceptional  abilities  could  counteract  such  youth  as 
that. 

"That,"  said  Mr.  Hickok,  glancing  cursorily  at  Charles 


QUEED  251 

Gardiner  West,  "is  exactly  the  sort  of  abilities  Mr.  Queed 
possesses." 

Discussion  flagged.  The  chairman  asked  if  they  were 
ready  for  a  vote  upon  Mr.  Queed. 

"No,  no  —  let's  take  our  time,"  said  Mr.  Wilmerding. 
"Perhaps  somebody  has  other  nominations  to  offer." 

No  one  seemed  to  have  other  nominations  to  offer.  Some 
minutes  were  consumed  by  random  suggestions  and  unpro- 
gressive  recommendations.  Busy  directors  began  to  look 
at  their  watches. 

"Look  here,  Card  —  I  mean  Mr.  West,"  suddenly  said 
young  Theodore  Fyne,  the  baby  of  the  board.  "Why 
could  n't  we  persuade  you  to  take  the  editorship?  .  .  .  Re 
sign  from  the  college,  you  know?" 

"Now  you  have  said  something!"  cried  Mr.  Hopkins,  en 
thusiastically. 

Mr.  West,  by  a  word  and  a  gesture,  indicated  that  the 
suggestion  was  preposterous  and  the  conversation  highly 
unwelcome. 

But  it  was  obvious  that  young  Mr.  Fyne's  suggestion  had 
caught  the  directors  at  sight.  Mr.  Shorter  and  Mr.  Porter 
affirmed  that  they  had  not  ventured  to  hope,  etc.,  etc.,  but 
that  if  Mr.  West  could  be  induced  to  consider  the  position,  no 
choice  would  appear  to  them  so  eminently  —  etc. ,  etc.  So  said 
Mr.  Boggs.  So  said  Messrs.  Hopkins,  Fyne,  and  Wilmerding. 

Mr.  Hickok,  the  director  who  resembled  James  E.  Winter, 
looked  out  of  the  window. 

Mr.  West,  obviously  restive  under  these  tributes,  was  con 
strained  to  state  his  position  more  fully.  For  more  than  one 
reason  which  should  be  evident,  he  said,  the  mention  of  his 
name  in  this  connection  was  most  embarrassing  and  dis 
tasteful  to  him.  While  thanking  the  directors  heartily  for 
their  evidences  of  good -will,  he  therefore  begged  them  to 
desist,  and  proceed  with  the  discussion  of  other  candidates. 

"In  that  case,"  said  Mr.  Hickok,  "it  appears  to  be  the 
reluctant  duty  of  the  nominator  to  withdraw  Mr.  West's 
name." 


252  QUEED 

But  the  brilliant  young  man's  name,  once  thrown  into  the 
arena,  could  no  more  be  withdrawn  than  the  fisherman  of 
legend  could  restore  the  genie  to  the  bottle,  or  Pandora  get 
her  pretty  gifts  back  into  the  box  again.  There  was  the  idea, 
fairly  out  and  vastly  alluring.  The  kindly  directors  pressed 
it  home.  No  doubt  they,  as  well  as  Plonny  Neal,  appreciated 
that  Blaines  College  did  not  give  the  young  man  a  fair  field 
for  his  talents ;  and  certainly  they  knew  with  admiration  the 
articles  with  which  he  sometimes  adorned  the  columns  of 
their  paper.  Of  all  the  directors,  they  now  pointed  out,  he 
had  stood  closest  to  Colonel  Cowles,  and  was  most  familiar 
with  the  traditions  and  policies  of  the  Post.  Their  urgings 
increased  in  force  and  persistence;  perhaps  they  felt  en 
couraged  by  a  certain  want  of  finality  in  the  young  man's 
tone ;  and  at  length  West  was  compelled  to  make  yet  another 
statement. 

He  was,  he  explained,  utterly  disconcerted  at  the  turn  the 
discussion  had  taken,  and  found  the  situation  so  embarrass 
ing  that  he  must  ask  his  friends,  the  directors,  to  extricate 
him  from  it  at  once.  The  editorship  of  the  Post  was  an  office 
which  he,  personally,  had  never  aspired  to,  but  it  would  be 
presumption  for  him  to  deny  that  he  regarded  it  as  a  post 
which  would  reflect  honor  upon  any  one.  He  was  willing  to 
admit,  in  this  confidential  circle,  moreover,  that  he  had  taken 
up  college  work  chiefly  with  the  ambition  of  assisting  Blaines 
over  a  critical  year  or  two  in  its  history,  and  that,  to  put  it 
only  generally,  he  was  not  indefinitely  bound  to  his  present 
position.  But  under  the  present  circumstances,  as  he  said, 
he  could  not  consent  to  any  discussion  of  his  name;  and 
unless  the  directors  would  agree  to  drop  him  from  further 
consideration,  which  he  earnestly  preferred,  he  must  reluct 
antly  suggest  adjournment. 

"An  interregnum,"  said  Mr.  Hickok,  looking  out  of  the 
window,  "is  an  unsatisfactory,  not  to  say  a  dangerous 
thing.  Would  it  not  be  better,  since  we  are  gathered  for 
that  purpose,  to  take  decisive  action  to-day?" 

"  What  is  your  pleasure,  gentlemen  ?  "  inquired  Chairman 
Byrd. 


QUEED  253 

Mr.  Hickok  was  easily  overruled.  The  directors  seized 
eagerly  on  Mr.  West's  suggestion.  On  motion  of  Mr.  Hop 
kins,  seconded  by  Mr.  Shorter  and  Mr.  Porter,  the  meeting 
stood  adjourned  to  the  third  day  following  at  noon. 

On  the  second  day  following  the  Post  carried  the  inter 
esting  announcement  that  Mr.  West  had  resigned  from  the 
presidency  of  Blaines  College,  a  bit  of  news  which  his  friends 
read  with  sincere  pleasure.  The  account  of  the  occurrence 
gave  one  to  understand  that  all  Mr.  West's  well-known  per 
suasiveness  had  been  needed  to  force  the  trustees  to  accept 
his  resignation.  And  when  James  E.  Winter  read  this  part 
of  it,  at  his  suburban  breakfast,  he  first  laughed,  and  then 
swore.  The  same  issue  of  the  Post  carried  an  editorial,  men 
tioning  in  rather  a  sketchy  way  the  benefits  Mr.  West  had 
conferred  upon  Blaines  College,  and  paying  a  high  and  confi 
dent  tribute  to  his  qualities  as  a  citizen.  The  young  acting- 
editor,  who  never  wrote  what  he  did  not  think,  had  taken 
much  pains  with  this  editorial,  especially  the  sketchy  part. 
Of  course  the  pestiferous  Chronicle  took  an  entirely  different 
view  of  the  situation.  "The  Chronicle  has  won  its  great 
fight,"  so  it  nervily  said,  "against  classism  in  Blaines  Col 
lege."  And  it  had  the  vicious  taste  to  add :  "  Nothing  in  Mr. 
West's  presidential  life  became  him  like  the  leaving  of  it." 

On  the  third  day  the  directors  met  again.  With  char 
acteristic  delicacy  of  feeling,  West  remained  away  from  the 
meeting.  However,  Mr.  Hopkins,  who  seemed  to  know  what 
he  was  talking  about,  at  once  expressed  his  conviction  that 
they  might  safely  proceed  to  the  business  which  had  brought 
them  together. 

"Perceiving  clearly  that  I  represent  a  minority  view," 
said  Mr.  Hickok,  "I  request  the  director  who  nominated 
Mr.  Queed  to  withdraw  his  name.  I  think  it  proper  that 
our  action  should  be  unanimous.  But  I  will  say,  frankly,  that 
if  Mr.  Queed's  name  remains  before  the  board,  I  shall  vote 
for  him,  since  I  consider  him  from  every  point  of  view  the 
man  for  the  position." 

Mr.  Queed's  name  having  been  duly  withdrawn,  the  di- 


254  QUEED 

rectors  unanimously  elected  Charles  Gardiner  West  to  the 
editorship  of  the  Post.  By  a  special  resolution  introduced  by 
Mr.  Hopkins,  they  thanked  Mr.  Queed  for  his  able  con 
duct  of  the  editorial  page  in  the  absence  of  the  editor,  and 
voted  him  an  increased  honorarium  of  eighteen  hundred 
dollars  a  year. 

The  directors  adjourned,  and  Mr.  Hickok  stalked  out, 
looking  more  like  James  E.  Winter  than  ever.  The  other 
directors,  however,  looked  highly  gratified  at  themselves. 
They  went  out  heartily  congratulating  each  other.  B  y  clever 
work  they  had  secured  for  their  paper  the  services  of  one 
of  the  ablest,  most  gifted,  most  polished  and  popular  young 
men  in  the  State.  Nevertheless,  though  they  never  knew 
it,  their  action  was  decidedly  displeasing  to  at  least  one  faith 
ful  reader  of  the  Post,  to  wit,  Miss  Charlotte  Lee  Weyland, 
of  the  Department  of  Charities.  Sharlee  felt  strongly  that 
Mr.  Queed  should  have  had  the  editorship,  then  and  there. 
It  might  be  said  that  she  had  trained  him  up  for  exactly  that 
position.  Of  course,  Mr.  West,  her  very  good  friend,  would 
make  an  editor  of  the  first  order.  But,  with  all  the  flocks 
that  roamed  upon  his  horizon,  ought  he  to  have  reached  out 
and  plucked  the  one  ewe  lamb  of  the  poor  assistant  ?  Be 
sides,  she  thought  that  Mr.  West  ought  to  have  remained 
at  Blaines  College. 

But  how  could  she  maintain  this  attitude  of  criticism  when 
the  new  editor  himself,  bursting  in  upon  her  little  parlor 
in  a  golden  nimbus  of  optimism,  radiant  good  humor  and 
success,  showed  up  the  shallowness  and  the  injustice  of  it? 

"To  have  that  college  off  my  neck  —  Whew!  I'm  as 
happy,  my  friend,  as  a  schoolboy  on  the  first  day  of  vaca 
tion.  I  have  n't  talked  much  about  it  to  you,"  continued 
Mr.  West,  "for  it's  a  bore  to  listen  to  other  people's  troubles 
—  but  that  college  had  become  a  perfect  old  man  of  the  sea ! 
The  relief  is  glorious !  I  'm  bursting  with  energy  and  enthu 
siasm  and  big  plans  for  the  Post." 

"And  Mr.  Queed?"  said  Sharlee.  "Was  he  much  dis 
appointed?" 


QUEED  255 

West  was  a  little  surprised  at  the  question,  but  he  gathered 
from  her  tone  that  she  thought  Mr.  Queed  had  some  right 
to  be. 

"Why,  I  think  not,"  he  answered,  decisively.  "Why  in 
the  world  should  he  be?  Of  course  it  means  only  a  delay  of 
a  year  or  two  for  him,  at  the  most.  I  betray  no  confidence 
when  I  tell  you  that  I  do  not  expect  to  remain  editor  of  the 
Post  forever." 

Sharlee  appeared  struck  by  this  summary  of  the  situa 
tion,  which,  to  tell  the  truth,  had  never  occurred  to  her. 
Therefore,  West  went  on  to  sketch  it  more  in  detail  to  her. 

"The  last  thing  in  the  world  that  I  would  do,"  said  he, 
"is  to  stand  in  that  boy's  light.  My  one  wish  is  to  push  him 
to  the  front  just  as  fast  as  he  can  stride.  Why,  I  discovered 
Queed  —  you  and  I  did,  that  is  —  and  I  think  I  may  claim 
to  have  done  something  toward  training  him.  To  speak 
quite  frankly,  the  situation  was  this:  In  spite  of  his  great 
abilities,  he  is  still  very  young  and  inexperienced.  Give  him 
a  couple  of  years  in  which  to  grow  and  broaden  and  get 
his  bearings  more  fully,  and  he  will  be  the  very  best  man  in 
sight  for  the  place.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  were  thrust 
prematurely  into  great  responsibility,  he  would  be  almost 
certain  to  make  some  serious  error,  some  fatal  break,  which 
would  impair  his  usefulness,  and  perhaps  ruin  it  forever. 
Do  you  see  my  point?  As  his  sponsor  on  the  Post,  it  seemed 
to  me  unwise  and  unfair  to  expose  him  to  the  risks  of  forcing 
his  pace.  That's  the  whole  story.  I 'm  not  the  king  at  all. 
I'm  only  the  regent  during  the  king's  minority." 

Sharlee  now  saw  how  unjust  she  had  been,  to  listen  to  the 
small  whisper  of  doubt  of  West's  entire  magnanimity. 

"You  are  much  wiser  and  farther-sighted  than  I." 

"Perish  the  thought!" 

"I'm  glad  my  little  Doctor  —  only  he  is  n't  either  little 
or  very  much  of  a  doctor  any  more  —  has  such  a  good  friend 
at  court." 

"Nonsense.  It  was  only  what  anybody  who  stopped  to 
think  a  moment  would  have  done." 


256  QUEED 

"Not  everybody  who  stops  to  think  is  so  generous.  .  .  ." 

This  thought,  too,  Mr.  West  abolished  by  a  word. 

"But  you  will  like  the  work,  won't  you!"  continued  Shar- 
lee,  still  self-reproachful.  "I  do  hope  you  will." 

"I  shall  like  it  immensely,"  said  West,  above  pretending, 
as  some  regents  would  have  done,  that  he  was  martyring 
himself  for  his  friend,  the  king.  "Where  can  you  find  any 
bigger  or  nobler  work?  At  Blaines  College  of  blessed  mem 
ory,  the  best  I  could  hope  for  was  to  reach  and  influence  a 
handful  of  lumpish  boys.  How  tremendously  broader  is  the 
opportunity  on  the  Post!  Think  of  having  a  following  of 
a  hundred  thousand  readers  a  day!  (You  allow  three  or 
four  readers  to  a  copy,  you  know.)  Think  of  talking  every 
morning  to  such  an  audience  as  that,  preaching  progress 
and  high  ideals,  courage  and  honesty  and  kindness  and 
faith  —  moulding  their  opinions  and  beliefs,  their  ambi 
tions,  their  very  habits  of  thought,  as  I  think  they  ought 
to  be  moulded.  ..." 

He  talked  in  about  this  vein  till  eleven  o'clock,  and  Sharlee 
listened  with  sincere  admiration.  Nevertheless,  he  left  her 
still  troubled  by  a  faint  doubt  as  to  how  Mr.  Queed  himself 
felt  about  what  had  been  done  for  his  larger  good.  But  when 
she  next  saw  Queed,  only  a  few  days  later,  this  doubt  in 
stantly  dissolved  and  vanished.  She  had  never  seen  him  less 
inclined  to  indict  the  world  and  his  fortune. 


XXI 

Queed  sits  on  the  Steps  with  Sharlee,  and  sees  Some  Old  Soldiers 
go  marching  by. 

FAR  as  the  eye  oould  see,  either  way,  the  street  was  two 
parallels  of  packed  humanity.  Both  sidewalks,  up  and 
down,  were  loaded  to  capacity  and  spilling  off  surplus 
down  the  side-streets.  Navigation  was  next  to  impossible; 
as  for  crossing  you  were  a  madman  to  think  of  such  a  thing. 
At  the  sidewalks'  edge  policemen  patrolled  up  and  down 
in  the  street  with  their  incessant  cry  of  "Back  there!"  — 
pausing  now  and  then  to  dislodge  small  boys  from  trees, 
whither  they  had  climbed  at  enormous  peril  to  themselves 
and  innocent  by-standers.  Bunting,  flags,  streamers  were 
everywhere ;  now  and  then  a  floral  arch  bearing  words  of  wel 
come  spanned  the  roadway ;  circus  day  in  a  small  town  was 
not  a  dot  upon  the  atmosphere  of  thrilled  expectancy  so 
all- pervasive  here.  It  was,  in  fact,  the  crowning  occasion 
of  the  Confederate  Reunion,  and  the  fading  remnants  of  Lee's 
armies  were  about  to  pass  in  annual  parade  and  review. 

Mrs.  Weyland's  house  stood  full  on  the  line  of  march.  It 
was  the  house  she  had  come  to  as  a  bride ;  she  owned  it ;  and 
because  it  could  not  easily  be  converted  over  her  head  into 
negotiable  funds,  it  had  escaped  the  predacious  clutches  of 
Henry  G.  Surface.  After  the  crash,  it  would  doubtless  have 
been  sensible  to  sell  it  and  take  something  cheaper ;  but  sen 
timent  made  her  cling  to  this  house,  and  her  daughter, 
in  time,  went  to  work  to  uphold  sentiment's  hands.  It  was 
not  a  large  house,  or  a  fine  one,  but  it  did  have  a  very  com 
fortable  little  porch.  To-day  this  porch  was  beautifully 
decorated,  like  the  whole  town,  with  the  colors  of  two  coun 
tries,  one  living  and  one  dead;  and  the  decorations  for  the 
dead  were  three  times  greater  than  the  decorations  for  the 


258  QUEED 

living.  And  why  not?  Yet,  at  that,  Sharlee  was  liberal- 
minded  and  a  thorough-going  nationalist.  On  some  houses, 
the  decorations  for  the  dead  were  five  times  greater,  like 
Benjamin's  mess;  on  others,  ten  times;  on  yet  others,  no 
colors  at  all  floated  but  the  beloved  Stars  and  Bars. 

Upon  the  steps  of  Mrs.  Wey land's  porch  sat  Mr.  Queed, 
come  by  special  invitation  of  Mrs.  Weyland's  daughter  to 
witness  the  parade. 

The  porch,  being  so  convenient  for  seeing  things,  was  hos 
pitably  taxed  to  its  limits.  New  people  kept  turning  in  at  the 
gate,  mostly  ladies,  mostly  white-haired  ladies  wearing 
black,  and  Sharlee  was  incessantly  springing  up  to  greet 
them.  However,  Queed,  feeling  that  the  proceedings  might 
be  instructive  to  him,  had  had  the  foresight  to  come  early, 
before  the  sidewalks  solidified  with  spectators;  and  at 
first,  and  spasmodically  thereafter,  he  had  some  talk  with 
Sharlee. 

"So  you  did  n't  forget?"  she  said,  in  greeting  him. 

He  eyed  her  reflectively.  "  When  I  was  seven  years  old," 
he  began,  "  Tim  once  asked  me  to  attend  to  something  for  him 
while  he  went  out  for  a  minute.  It  was  to  mind  some  bacon 
that  he  had  put  on  to  broil  for  supper.  I  became  absorbed  in 
a  book  I  was  reading,  and  Tim  came  back  to  find  the  bacon 
a  crisp.  I  believe  I  have  never  forgotten  anything  from  that 
day  to  this.  You  have  a  holiday  at  the  Department?" 

"Why,  do  you  suppose  we'd  work  to-day!"  said  Sharlee, 
and  introduced  him  to  her  mother,  who,  having  attentively 
overheard  his  story  of  Tim  and  the  bacon,  proceeded  to 
look  him  over  with  some  care. 

Sharlee  left  them  for  a  moment,  and  came  back  bearing 
a  flag  about  the  size  of  a  man's  visiting  card. 

"You  are  one  of  us,  are  n't  you?  I  have  brought  you," 
she  said,  "your  colors." 

Queed  looked  and  recognized  the  flag  that  was  everywhere 
in  predominance  that  day.  "And  what  will  it  mean  if  I 
wear  it?" 

"Only,"  said  Sharlee,  "that  you  love  the  South." 


QUEED  259 

Vaguely  Queed  saw  in  her  blue-spar  eyes  the  same  kind  of 
softness  that  he  noticed  in  people's  voices  this  afternoon, 
a  softness  which  somehow  reminded  him  of  a  funeral,  Fin's 
or  Colonel  Cowles's. 

" Oh,  very  well,  if  you  like." 

Sharlee  put  the  flag  in  his  buttonhole  under  her  mother's 
watchful  gaze.  Then  she  got  cushions  and  straw-mats,  and 
explained  their  uses  in  connection  with  steps.  Next,  she 
gave  a  practical  demonstration  of  the  same  by  seating  the 
young  man,  and  sitting  down  beside  him. 

"One  thing  I  have  noticed  about  loving  the  South. 
Everybody  does  it,  who  takes  the  trouble  to  know  us. 
Look  at  the  people!  —  millions  and  millions.  ..." 

"Colonel  Cowles  would  have  liked  this." 

"Yes  —  dear  old  man."  Sharlee  paused  a  moment,  and 
then  went  on.  "He  was  in  the 'parade  last  year  —  on  the 
beautifullest  black  horse  — -  You  never  saw  anything  so 
handsome  as  he  looked  that  day.  It  was  in  Savannah,  and 
I  went.  I  was  a  maid  of  honor,  but  my  real  duties  were  to 
keep  him  from  marching  around  in  the  hot  sun  all  day.  And 
now  this  year  .  .  .  You  see,  that  is  what  makes  it  so  sad. 
When  these  old  men  go  tramping  by,  everybody  is  thinking : 
'  Hundreds  of  them  won't  be  here  next  year,  and  hundreds 
more  the  next  year,  and  soon  will  come  a  year  when  there 
won't  be  any  parade  at  all.'" 

She  sprang  up  to  welcome  a  new  arrival,  whom  she  greeted 
as  either  Aunt  Mary  or  Cousin  Maria,  we  really  cannot 
undertake  to  say  which. 

Queed  glanced  over  the  group  on  the  porch,  to  most  of 
whom  he  had  been  introduced,  superfluously,  as  it  seemed 
to  him.  There  must  have  been  twenty  or  twenty-five  of 
them;  some  seated,  some  standing  at  the  rail,  some  sitting 
near  him  on  the  steps;  but  all,  regardless  of  age  and  sex, 
wearing  the  Confederate  colors.  He  noticed  particularly 
the  white-haired  old  ladies,  and  somehow  their  faces,  also, 
put  him  in  mind  of  Fifi's  or  Colonel  Cowles's  funeral. 

Sharlee  came  and  sat  down  by  him  again.   "  Mr.  Queed," 


26o  QUEED 

said  she,  "I  don't  know  whether  you  expect  sympathy 
about  what  the  Post  directors  did,  or  congratulations." 

"Oh,  congratulations,"  he  answered  at  once.  "Consider 
ing  that  they  wanted  to  discharge  me  a  year  ago,  I  should 
say  that  the  testimonial  they  gave  me  represented  a  rather 
large  change  of  front." 

"Personally,  I  think  it  is  splendid.  But  the  important 
thing  is:  does  it  satisfy  you?" 

"Oh,  quite."  He  added  :  "If  they  had  gone  outside  for 
a  man,  I  might  have  felt  slighted.  It  is  very  different  with  a 
man  like  West.  I  am  perfectly  willing  to  wait.  You  may 
remember  that  I  did  not  promise  to  be  editor  in  any  par 
ticular  year." 

"I  know.  And  when  they  do  elect  you  —  you  see  I  say 
when,  and  not  if  —  shall  you  pitch  it  in  their  faces,  as  you 
said?" 

"No  —  I  have  decided  to  keep  it  —  for  a  time  at  any 
rate." 

Sharlee  smiled,  but  it  was  an  inward  smile  and  he  never 
knew  anything  about  it.  "  Have  you  gotten  really  interested 
in  the  work  —  personally  interested,  I  mean?" 

He  hesitated.  "I  hardly  like  to  say  how  much." 

"The  more  you  become  interested  in  it  —  and  I  believe 
It  will  be  progressive  —  the  less  you  will  mind  saying  so." 

"It  is  a  strange  interest  —  utterly  unlike  me — " 

"How  do  you  know  it  is  n't  more  like  you  than  anything 
you  ever  did  in  your  life?" 

That  struck  him  to  silence;  he  gave  her  a  quick  inquiring 
glance,  and  looked  away  at  once;  and  Sharlee,  for  the  mo 
ment  entirely  oblivious  of  the  noise  and  the  throng  all  about 
her,  went  on. 

"I  called  that  a  magnificent  boast  once  —  about  your  be 
ing  editor  of  the  Post.  Do  you  remember?  Is  n't  it  time  I 
was  confessing  that  you  have  got  the  better  of  me?" 

"  I  think  it  is  too  soon,"  he  answered,  in  his  quietest  voice, 
"to  say  whether  I  have  got  the  better  of  you,  or  you  have 
got  the  better  of  me." 


QUEED  261 

Sharlee  looked  off  down  the  street.  "But  you  certainly 
will  be  editor  of  the  Post  some  day." 

"  As  I  recall  it,  we  did  not  speak  only  of  editorial  writing 
that  night." 

"  Oh,  listen  ...   !" 

From  far  away  floated  the  strains  of  "  Dixie,"  crashed  out 
by  forty  bands.  The  crowd  on  the  sidewalks  stirred;  pro 
longed  shouts  went  up;  and  now  all  those  who  were  seated 
on  the  porch  arose  at  one  motion  and  came  forward. 

Sharlee  had  to  spring  up  to  greet  still  another  relative.  She 
came  back  in  a  moment,  sincerely  hoping  that  Mr.  Queed 
would  resume  the  conversation  which  her  exclamation  had 
interrupted.  But  he  spoke  of  quite  a  different  matter,  a  faint 
cloud  on  his  intelligent  brow. 

"You  should  hear  Professor  Nicolovius  on  these  veterans 
of  yours." 

"What  does  he  say  about  them?  Something  hateful,  I'm 
sure." 

"Among  other  things,  that  they  are  a  lot  of  professional 
beggars  who  have  lived  for  forty  years  on  their  gray  uniforms, 
and  can  best  serve  their  country  by  dying  with  all  possible 
speed.  Do  you  know,"  he  mused,  "if  you  could  hear  him,  I 
believe  you  would  be  tempted  to  guess  that  he  is  a  former 
Union  officer  —  who  got  into  trouble,  perhaps,  and  was 
cashiered." 

"But  of  course  you  know  all  about  him?" 

"  No,"  said  he,  honest,  but  looking  rather  annoyed  at  hav 
ing  given  her  such  an  opening,  "I  know  only  what  he  told 
me." 

"Sharlee,"  came  her  mother's  voice  from  the  rear,  "are 
you  sitting  on  the  cold  stone?" 

"No,  mother.  Two  mats  and  a  cushion." 

"Well,  he  is  not  a  Union  officer,"  said  Sharlee  to  Queed, 
' '  for  if  he  were,  he  would  not  be  bitter.  All  the  bitterness  now 
adays  comes  from  the  non-combatants,  the  camp-followers, 
the  sutlers,  and  the  cowards.  Look,  Mr.  Queed!  Look!" 

The  street  had  become  a  tumult,  the  shouting  grew  into  a 


262  QUEED 

roar.  Two  squares  away  the  head  of  the  parade  swept  into 
view,  and  drew  steadily  nearer.  Mr.  Queed  looked,  and  felt 
a  thrill  in  despite  of  himself. 

At  the  head  of  the  column  came  the  escort,  with  the  three 
regimental  bands,  mounted  and  bicycle  police,  city  officials, 
visiting  military,  sons  of  veterans,  and  the  militia,  includ 
ing  the  resplendent  Light  Infantry  Blues  of  Richmond,  a 
crack  drill  regiment  with  an  honorable  history  dating  from 
1789,  and  the  handsomest  uniforms  ever  seen.  Behind  the 
escort  rode  the  honored  commander-in-chief  of  the  veterans, 
and  staff,  the  grand  marshal  and  staff,  and  a  detachment  of 
mounted  veterans.  The  general  commanding  rode  a  dashing 
white  horse,  which  he  sat  superbly  despite  his  years,  and  re 
ceived  an  ovation  all  along  the  line.  An  even  greater  ovation 
went  to  two  festooned  carriages  which  rolled  behind  the 
general  staff:  they  contained  four  black-clad  women,  no 
longer  young,  who  bore  names  that  had  been  dear  to  the 
hearts  of  the  Confederacy.  After  these  came  the  veterans 
afoot,  stepping  like  youngsters,  for  that  was  their  pride,  in 
faded  equipments  which  contrasted  sharply  with  the  shin 
ing  trappings  of  the  militia.  They  marched  by  state  divi 
sions,  each  division  marshaled  into  brigades,  each  brigade 
subdivided  again  into  camps.  At  the  head  of  each  division 
rode  the  major-general  and  staff,  and  behind  each  staff  came 
a  carriage  containing  the  state's  sponsor  and  maids  of  honor. 
And  everywhere  there  were  bands,  bands  playing  "Dixie," 
and  the  effect  would  have  been  even  more  glorious,  if  only 
any  two  of  them  had  played  the  same  part  of  it  at  the  same 
time. 

Everybody  was  standing.  It  is  doubtful  if  in  all  the  city 
there  was  anybody  sitting  now,  save  those  restrained  by 
physical  disabilities.  Conversation  on  the  Weyland  piazza 
became  exceedingly  disjointed.  Everybody  was  excitedly 
calling  everybody  else's  attention  to  things  that  seemed  par 
ticularly  important  in  the  passing  spectacle.  To  Queed  the 
amount  these  people  appeared  to  know  about  it  all  was 
amazing.  All  during  the  afternoon  he  heard  Sharlee  identi- 


QUEED  263 

fying  fragments  of  regiments  with  a  sureness  of  knowledge 
that  he,  an  authority  on  knowledge,  marveled  at. 

The  escort  passed,  and  the  officers  and  staffs  drew  on.  The 
fine-figured  old  commander-in-chief,  when  he  came  abreast, 
turned  and  looked  full  at  the  Weyland  piazza,  seemed  to 
search  it  for  a  face,  and  swept  his  plumed  hat  to  his  stirrup 
in  a  profound  bow.  The  salute  was  greeted  on  the  porch  with 
a  burst  of  hand-clapping  and  a  great  waving  of  flags. 

"That  was  for  my  grandmother.  He  was  in  love  with  her 
in  1850,"  said  Sharlee  to  Queed,  and  immediately  whisked 
away  to  tell  something  else  to  somebody  else. 

One  of  the  first  groups  of  veterans  in  the  line,  heading  the 
Virginia  Division,  was  the  popular  R.  E.  Lee  Camp  of  Rich 
mond.  All  afternoon  they  trod  to  the  continual  accompani 
ment  of  cheers.  No  exclusive ' '  show ' '  company  ever  marched 
in  better  time  than  these  septuagenarians,  and  this  was 
everywhere  the  subject  of  comment.  A  Grand  Army  man 
stood  in  the  press  on  the  sidewalk,  and,  struck  by  the  gallant 
step  of  the  old  fellows,  yelled  out  good-naturedly:  — 

"You  boys  been  drillin'  to  learn  to  march  like  that,  have  n't 
you?" 

Instantly  a  white-beard  in  the  ranks  called  back:  "No, 
sir !  We  never  have  forgot ! ' ' 

Other  camps  were  not  so  rhythmic  in  their  tread.  Some  of 
the  lines  were  very  dragging  and  straggly ;  the  old  feet  shuffled 
and  faltered  in  a  way  which  showed  that  their  march  was 
nearly  over.  Not  fifty  yards  away  from  Queed,  one  veteran 
pitched  out  of  the  ranks;  he  was  lifted  up  and  received  into 
the  house  opposite  which  he  fell.  Sadder  than  the  men  were 
the  old  battle-flags,  soiled  wisps  that  the  aged  hands  held 
aloft  with  the  most  solicitous  care.  The  flag- poles  were  heavy 
and  the  men's  arms  weaker  than  once  they  were;  sometimes 
two  or  even  three  men  acted  jointly  as  standard-bearer. 

These  old  flags,  mere  unrecognizable  fragments  as  many 
of  them  were,  were  popular  with  the  onlookers.  Each  as  it 
marched  by,  was  hailed  with  a  new  roar.  Of  course  there 
were  many  tears.  There  was  hardly  anybody  in  all  that  crowd, 


264  QUEED 

over  fifty  years  old,  in  whom  the  sight  of  these  fast  dwindling 
ranks  did  not  stir  memories  of  some  personal  bereavement. 
The  old  ladies  on  the  porch  no  longer  used  their  handker 
chiefs  chiefly  for  waving.  Queed  saw  one  of  them  wave  hers 
frantically  toward  a  drooping  little  knot  of  passing  gray- 
coats,  and  then  fall  back  into  a  chair,  the  same  handkerchief 
at  her  eyes.  Sharlee,  who  was  explaining  everything  that 
anybody  wanted  to  know,  happened  to  be  standing  near  him ; 
she  followed  his  glance  and  whispered  gently:  — 

"Her  husband  and  two  of  her  brothers  were  killed  at 
Gettysburg.  Her  husband  was  in  Pickett's  Division.  Those 
were  Pickett's  men  that  just  passed — about  all  there  are 
left  now." 

A  little  while  afterwards,  she  added:  "It  is  not  so  gay  as 
one  of  your  Grand  Army  Days,  is  it?  You  see  ...  it  all 
comes  home  very  close  to  us.  Those  old  men  that  can't  be 
with  us  much  longer  are  our  mothers'  brothers,  and  sweet 
hearts,  and  uncles,  and  fathers.  They  went  out  so  young  — 
so  brave  and  full  of  hope  —  they  poured  out  by  hundreds 
of  thousands.  Down  this  very  street  they  marched,  no  more 
than  boys,  and  our  mothers  stood  here  where  we  are  stand 
ing,  to  bid  them  godspeed.  And  now  look  at  what  is  left  of 
them,  straggling  by.  There  is  nobody  on  this  porch  —  but 
you  —  who  did  not  lose  somebody  that  was  dear  to  them. 
.  .  .  And  then  there  was  our  pride  .  .  .  for  we  were  proud. 
So  that  is  why  our  old  ladies  cry  to-day." 

"And  why  your  young  ladies  cry,  too?" 

"Oh,  ...  I  am  not  crying." 

"Don't  you  suppose  I  know  when  people  are  crying  and 
when  they  are  n't?  —  Why  do  you  do  it?" 

Sharlee  lowered  her  eyes.  "Well  .  .  .  it's  all  pretty  sad, 
you  know  .  .  .  pretty  sad." 

She  turned  away,  leaving  him  to  his  own  devices.  From 
his  place  on  the  top  step,  Queed  turned  and  let  his  frank 
glance  run  over  the  ladies  on  the  porch.  The  sadness  of  face 
that  he  had  noticed  earlier  had  dissolved  and  precipitated 
now :  there  was  hardly  a  dry  eye  on  that  porch  but  his  own. 


QUEED  265 

What  were  they  all  crying  for?  Miss  Weyland's  explanation 
did  not  seem  very  convincing.  The  war  had  ended  a  genera 
tion  ago.  The  whole  thing  had  been  over  and  done  with  many 
years  before  she  was  born. 

He  turned  again,  and  looked  out  with  unseeing  eyes  over 
the  thick  street,  with  the  thin  strip  of  parade  moving  down  the 
middle  of  it.  He  guessed  that  these  ladies  on  the  porch  were 
not  crying  for  definite  brothers,  or  fathers,  or  sweethearts 
they  had  lost.  People  did  n't  do  that  after  forty  years;  here 
was  Fifi  only  dead  a  year,  and  he  never  saw  anybody  crying 
for  her.  No,  they  were  weeping  over  an  idea;  it  was  senti 
ment,  and  a  vague,  misty,  unreasonable  sentiment  at  that. 
And  yet  he  could  not  say  that  Miss  Weyland  appeared  simply 
foolish  with  those  tears  in  her  eyes.  No,  the  girl  somehow 
managed  to  give  the  effect  of  seeing  farther  into  things  than 
he  himself.  .  .  .  Her  tears  evidently  were  in  the  nature  of 
a  tribute:  she  was  paying  them  to  an  idea.  Doubtless  there 
was  a  certain  largeness  about  that.  But  obviously  the  pay 
ing  of  such  a  tribute  could  do  no  possible  good  —  unless 
—  to  the  payer.  Was  there  anything  in  that?  —  in  the 
theory.  .  .  . 

Unusual  bursts  of  cheering  broke  their  way  into  his  con 
sciousness,  and  he  recalled  himself  to  see  a  squad  of  negro 
soldiers,  all  very  old  men,  hobbling  by.  These  were  of  the 
faithful,  whom  no  number  of  proclamations  could  shake  from 
allegiance  to  Old  Marster.  One  of  them  declared  himself  to 
be  Stonewall  Jackson's  cook.  Very  likely  Stonewall  Jackson's 
cooks  are  as  numerous  as  once  were  ladies  who  had  been 
kissed  by  LaFayette,  but  at  any  rate  this  old  negro  was  the 
object  of  lively  interest  all  along  the  line.  He  was  covered 
with  reunion  badges,  and  carried  two  live  chickens  under  his 
arm. 

Queed  went  down  to  the  bottom  step,  the  better  to  hear 
the  comments  of  the  onlookers,  for  this  was  what  interested 
him  most.  He  found  himself  standing  next  to  an  exception 
ally  clean-cut  young  fellow  of  about  his  own  age.  This  youth 
appeared  a  fine  specimen  of  the  sane,  wholesome,  successful 


266  QUEED 

young  American  business  man.  Yet  he  was  behaving  like  a 
madman,  yelling  like  Bedlam,  wildly  flaunting  his  hat  — 
a  splendid-looking  Panama  —  now  and  then  savagely  brand 
ishing  his  fists  at  an  unseen  foe.  Queed  heard  him  saying 
fiercely,  apparently  to  the  world  at  large:  "They  could  n't 
lick  us  now.  By  the  Lord,  they  could  n't  lick  us  now!" 

Queed  said  to  him:  "You  were  badly  outnumbered  when 
they  licked  you." 

Flaunting  his  hat  passionately  at  the  thin  columns,  the 
young  man  shouted  into  space:  "Outnumbered — outarmed 
— outequipped — outrationed  —  but  not  outgeneraled,  sir, 
not  outsoldiered,  not  outmanned!  " 

"You  seem  a  little  excited  about  it.  Yet  you  've  had  forty 
years  to  get  used  to  it." 

"Ah,"  brandished  the  young  man  at  the  soldiers,  a  glad 
battlenote  breaking  into  his  voice,  "  I  'm  being  addressed  by 
a  Yankee,  am  I?" 

"No,"  said  Queed,  "you  are  being  addressed  by  an  Ameri 
can." 

"That's  a  fair  reply,"  said  the  young  man;  and  consented 
to  take  his  eyes  from  the  parade  a  second  to  glance  at  the 
author  of  it.  "Hello!  You're  Doc  —  Mr.  Queed,  aren't 
you?" 

Queed,  surprised,  admitted  his  identity. 

"  Ye-a-a-a!"  said  the  young  man,  in  a  mighty  voice.  This 
time  he  shouted  it  directly  at  a  tall  old  gentleman  whose 
horse  was  just  then  dancing  by.  The  gentleman  smiled,  and 
waved  his  hand  at  the  flaunted  Panama. 

"A  fine-looking  man,"  said  Queed. 

"My  father,"  said  the  young  man.  "God  bless  his  heart!" 

"Was  your  father  in  the  war?" 

"Was  he  in  the  war?  My  dear  sir,  you  might  say  that  he 
was  the  war.  But  you  could  scrape  this  town  with  a  fine- 
tooth  comb  without  finding  anybody  of  his  age  that  was  n't 
in  the  war." 

The  necessity  for  a  new  demonstration  checked  his  speech 
for  a  moment. 


QUEED  267 

Queed  said:  "Who  are  these  veterans?  What  sort  of  people 
are  they?" 

"The  finest  fellows  in  the  world,"  said  the  young  man. 
"An  occasional  dead-beat  among  them,  of  course,  but  it's 
amazing  how  high  an  average  of  character  they  strike,  con 
sidering  that  they  came  out  of  four  years  of  war  —  war  's  de 
moralizing,  you  know! — with  only  their  shirts  to  their  backs, 
and  often  those  were  only  borrowed.  You  '11  find  some  mighty 
solid  business  men  in  the  ranks  out  there,  and  then  on  down 
to  the  humblest  occupations.  Look!  See  that  little  one- 
legged  man  with  the  beard  that  everybody's  cheering! 
That's  Corporal  Henkel  of  Petersburg,  commended  I  don't 
know  how  many  times  for  bravery,  and  they  would  have 
given  him  the  town  for  a  keepsake  when  it  was  all  over,  if  he 
had  wanted  it.  Well,  Henkel 's  a  cobbler  —  been  one  since 
'65  —  and  let  me  tell  you  he 's  a  blamed  good  one,  and  if 
you're  ever  in  Petersburg  and  want  any  half-soling  done, 
let  me  tell  you  —  Yea-a-a !  See  that  trim-looking  one  with 
the  little  mustache  —  saluting  now?  He  tried  to  save  Stone 
wall  Jackson's  life  on  the  2d  of  May,  1863,  —  threw  himself 
in  front  of  him  and  got  badly  potted.  He's  a  D.  D.  now. 
Yea-a-a-a!" 

A  victoria  containing  two  lovely  young  girls,  sponsor  and 
maid  of  honor  for  South  Carolina,  dressed  just  alike,  with 
parasols  and  enormous  hats,  rolled  by.  The  girls  smiled 
kindly  at  the  young  man,  and  he  went  through  a  very  proper 
salute. 

"Watch  the  people!"  he  dashed  on  eagerly.  "Wonderful 
how  they  love  these  old  soldiers,  is  n't  it?  —  they'd  give 'em 
anything !  And  what  a  fine  thing  that  is  for  them !  —  for  the 
people,  not  the  soldiers,  I  mean.  I  tell  you  we  all  give  too 
much  time  to  practical  things  —  business  —  making  money 
—  taking  things  away  from  each  other.  It's  a  fine  thing  to 
have  a  day  now  and  then  which  appeals  to  just  the  other 
side  of  us  —  a  regular  sentimental  spree.  Do  you  see  what 
I  mean?  Maybe  I  'm  talking  like  an  ass.  .  .  .  But  when  you 
talk  about  Americans,  Mr.  Queed  —  let  me  tell  you  that 


268  QUEED 

there  isn't  a  State  in  the  country  that  is  raising  better 
Americans  than  we  are  raising  right  here  in  this  city.  We  're 
as  solid  for  the  Union  as  Boston.  But  that  is  n't  saying  that 
we  have  forgotten  all  about  the  biggest  happening  in  our 
history  —  the  thing  that  threw  over  our  civilization,  wiped 
out  our  property,  and  turned  our  State  into  a  graveyard. 
If  we  forgot  that,  we  would  n't  be  Americans,  because  we 
would  n't  be  men." 

He  went  on  fragmentarily,  ever  and  anon  interrupting 
himself  to  give  individual  ovations  to  his  heroes  and  his 
gods : — 

"Through  the  North  and  West  you  may  have  one  old  sol 
dier  to  a  village ;  here  we  have  one  to  a  house.  For  you  it  was  a 
foreign  war,  which  meant  only  dispatches  in  the  newspapers. 
For  us  it  was  a  war  on  our  own  front  lawns,  and  the  way  we 
followed  it  was  by  the  hearses  backing  up  to  the  door.  You 
can  hardly  walk  a  mile  in  any  direction  out  of  this  city  with 
out  stumbling  upon  an  old  breastworks.  And  in  the  city — 
well,  you  know  all  the  great  old  landmarks,  all  around  us  as 
we  stand  here  now.  On  this  porch  behind  us  sits  a  lady  who 
knew  Lee  well.  Many  's  the  talk  she  had  with  him  after  the 
war.  My  mother,  a  bride  then,  sat  in  the  pew  behind  Davis 
that  Sunday  he  got  the  message  which  meant  that  the  war  was 
over.  History !  Why  this  old  town  drips  with  it.  Do  you  think 
we  should  forget  our  heroes,  Mr.  Queed?  Up  there  in  Massa 
chusetts,  if  you  have  a  place  where  John  Samuel  Quincy 
Adams  once  stopped  for  a  cup  of  tea,  you  fence  it  off,  put  a 
brass  plate  on  the  front  door,  and  charge  a  nickel  to  go  in. 
Which  will  history  say  is  the  greater  man,  Sam  Adams  or 
Robert  E.  Lee?  If  these  were  Washington's  armies  going  by, 
you  would  probably  feel  a  little  excited,  though  you  have  had 
a  hundred  and  twenty  years  to  get  used  to  Yorktown  and 
the  Philadelphia  Congress.  Well,  Washington  is  no  more 
to  the  nation  than  Lee  is  to  the  South. 

"But  don't  let  anybody  get  concerned  about  our  patriot 
ism.  We're  better  Americans,  not  worse,  because  of  days 
like  these,  the  reason  being,  as  I  say,  that  we  are  better 


QUEED  269 

men.  And  if  your  old  Uncle  Sammy  gets  into  trouble  some 
day,  never  fear  but  we'll  be  on  hand  to  pull  him  out,  with 
the  best  troops  that  ever  stepped,  and  another  Lee  to  lead 
them." 

Somewhere  during  the  afternoon  there  had  returned  to 
Queed  the  words  in  which  Sharlee  Weyland  had  pointed  out 
to  him  —  quite  unnecessarily  —  that  he  was  standing  here 
between  two  civilizations.  On  the  porch  now  sat  Miss  Wey 
land  's  grandmother,  representative  of  the  dead  aristocracy. 
By  his  side  stood,  clearly,  a  representative  of  the  rising  democ 
racy —  one  of  those  "splendid  young  men"  who,  the  girl 
thought,  would  soon  be  beating  the  young  men  of  the  North 
at  every  turn.  It  was  valuable  professionally  to  catch  the 
point  of  view  of  these  new  democrats;  and  now  he  had 
grasped  the  fact  that  whatever  the  changes  in  outward  form, 
it  had  an  unbroken  sentimental  continuity  with  the  type 
which  it  was  replacing. 

"Did  you  ever  hear  Ben  Hill's  tribute  to  Lee?"  inquired 
the  young  man  presently. 

Queed  happened  to  know  it  very  well.  However,  the  other 
could  not  be  restrained  from  reciting  it  for  his  own  satisfac 
tion. 

"It  is  good  —  a  good  piece  of  writing  and  a  fine  tribute," 
said  Queed.  "However,  I  read  a  shorter  and  in  some  ways 
an  even  better  one  in  Harper's  Weekly  the  other  day." 

"Harper's  Weekly!  Good  Heavens!  They '11  find  out  that 
William  Lloyd  Garrison  was  for  us  next.  What'd  it  say?" 

"  It  was  in  answer  to  some  correspondents  who  called  Lee 
a  traitor.  The  editor  wrote  five  lines  to  say  that,  while  it 
would  be  exceedingly  difficult  ever  to  make  '  traitor '  a  word  of 
honorable  distinction,  it  would  be  done  if  people  kept  on 
applying  it  to  Lee.  In  that  case,  he  said,  we  should  have  to 
find  a  new  word  to  mean  what  traitor  means  now." 

The  young  man  thought  this  over  until  its  full  meaning 
sank  into  him.  "  I  don't  know  how  you  could  say  anything 
finer  of  a  man,"  he  remarked  presently,  "  than  that  applying 
a  disgraceful  epithet  to  him  left  him  entirely  untouched,  but 


270  QUEED 

changed  the  whole  meaning  of  the  epithet.  By  George, 
that's  pretty  fine!" 

11  My  only  criticism  on  the  character,  or  rather  on  the 
greatness,  of  Lee,"  said  Queed,  irrespectively,  "is  that,  so 
far  as  I  have  ever  read,  he  never  got  angry.  One  feels  that  a 
hero  should  be  a  man  of  terrible  passions,  so  strong  that 
once  or  twice  in  his  life  they  get  away  from  him.  Washing 
ton  always  seems  a  bigger  man  because  of  his  blast  at 
Charles  Lee." 

The  young  man  seemed  interested  by  this  point  of  view. 
He  said  that  he  would  ask  Mrs.  Beauregard  about  it. 

Not  much  later  he  said  with  a  sigh:  " Well!  —  It's  about 
over.  And  now  I  must  pay  for  my  fun  —  duck  back  to  the 
office  for  a  special  night  session." 

Queed  had  taken  a  vague  fancy  to  this  youth,  whose  en 
viably  pleasant  manners  reminded  him  somehow  of  Charles 
Gardiner  West.  "I  supposed  that  it  was  only  in  newspaper 
offices  that  work  went  on  without  regard  to  holidays." 

The  young  man  laughed,  and  held  out  his  hand.  "  I  'm  very 
industrious,  if  you  please.  I  'm  delighted  to  have  met  you, 
Mr.  Queed  —  I  've  known  of  you  for  a  long  time.  My  name  's 
Byrd  —  Beverley  Byrd  —  and  I  wish  you  'd  come  and  see 
me  some  time.  Good-by.  I  hope  I  have  n't  bored  you  with 
all  my  war-talk.  I  lost  a  grandfather  and  three  uncles  in  it, 
and  I  can't  help  being  interested." 

The  last  of  the  parade  went  by;  the  dense  crowd  broke  and 
overran  the  street ;  and  Queed  stood  upon  the  bottom  step 
taking  his  leave  of  Miss  Weyland.  Much  interested,  he  had 
lingered  till  the  other  guests  were  gone ;  and  now  there  was 
nobody  upon  the  porch  but  Miss  Weyland 's  mother  and 
grandmother,  who  sat  at  the  further  end  of  it,  the  eyes  of  both, 
did  Mr.  Queed  but  know  it,  upon  him. 

"Why  don't  you  come  to  see  me  sometimes?  "  the  daughter 
and  granddaughter  was  saying  sweetly.  "I  think  you  will 
have  to  come  now,  for  this  was  a  party,  and  a  party  calls 
for  a  party-call.  Oh,  can  you  make  as  clever  a  pun  as  that?  " 

"Thank  you  —  but  I  never  pay  calls." 


QUEED  271 

"Oh,  but  you  are  beginning  to  do  a  good  many  things 
that  you  never  did  before." 

"Yes,"  he  answered  with  curious  depression.    "I  am." 

"Well,  don't  look  so  glum  about  it.  You  mustn't  think 
that  any  change  in  your  ways  of  doing  is  necessarily  for  the 
worse!  " 

He  refused  to  take  up  the  cudgels ;  an  uncanny  thing  from 
him.  "Well !  I  am  obliged  to  you  for  inviting  me  here  to-day. 
It  has  been  interesting  and  —  instructive." 

"And  now  you  have  got  us  all  neatly  docketed  on  your 
sociological  operating  table,  I  suppose?" 

"I  am  inclined  to  think,"  he  said  slowly,  "that  it  is  you 
who  have  got  me  on  the  operating  table  again." 

He  gave  her  a  quick  glance,  at  once  the  unhappiest  and 
the  most  human  look  that  she  had  ever  seen  upon  his  face. 

"No,"  said  she,  gently,  —  "if  you  are  on  the  table,  you 
have  put  yourself  there  this  time." 

"Well,  good-by— " 

"And  are  you  coming  to  see  me  —  to  pay  your  party-call?  " 

"Why  should  I?  What  is  the  point  of  these  conventions 
—  these  little  rules  — ?" 

"Don't  you  like  being  with  me?  Don't  you  get  a  great 
deal  of  pleasure  from  my  society?" 

"I  have  never  asked  myself  such  a  question." 

He  was  gazing  at  her  for  a  third  time ;  and  a  startled  look 
sprang  suddenly  into  his  eyes.  It  was  plain  that  he  was  ask 
ing  himself  such  a  question  now.  A  curious  change  passed 
over  his  face;  a  kind  of  dawning  consciousness  which,  it 
was  obvious,  embarrassed  him  to  the  point  of  torture,  while 
he  resolutely  declined  to  flinch  at  it. 

"Yes —  I  get  pleasure  from  your  society." 

The  admission  turned  him  rather  white,  but  he  saved  him 
self  by  instantly  flinging  at  her : ' '  However,  /  am  no  hedonist. ' ' 

Sharlee  retired  to  look  up  hedonist  in  the  dictionary. 

Later  that  evening,  Mrs.  Weyland  and  her  daughter  being 
together  upstairs,  the  former  said :  — 


C72  QUEED 

"Sharlee,  who  is  this  Mr.  Queed  that  you  paid  so  much 
attention  to  on  the  porch  this  evening?" 

"Why,  don't  you  know,  mother?  He  is  the  assistant  ed 
itor  of  the  Post,  and  is  going  to  be  editor  just  the  minute 
Mr.  West  retires.  For  you  see,  mother,  everybody  says  that 
he  writes  the  most  wonderful  articles,  although  I  assure 
you,  a  year  ago  — " 

"Yes,  but  who  is  he?  Where  does  he  come  from?  Who  are 
his  people?" 

"Oh,  I  see.  That  is  what  you  mean.  Well,  he  comes  from 
New  York,  where  he  led  the  most  interesting  literary  sort 
of  life,  studying  all  the  time,  except  when  he  was  doing  arti 
cles  for  the  great  reviews,  or  helping  a  lady  up  there  to  write 
a  thesaurus.  You  see,  he  was  fitting  himself  to  compose  a 
great  work  — " 

"Who  are  his  people?" 

"Oh,  that!"  said  Sharlee.  "Well,  that  question  is  not  so 
easy  to  answer  as  you  might  think.  It  opens  up  a  peculiar 
situation :  to  begin  with,  he  is  a  sort  of  an  orphan,  and  — " 

"How  do  you  mean,  a  sort  of  an  orphan?" 

"You  see,  that  is  just  where  the  peculiar  part  comes  in. 
There  is  the  heart  of  the  whole  mystery,  and  yet  right  there 
is  the  place  where  I  must  be  reticent  with  you,  mother,  for 
though  I  know  all  about  it,  it  was  told  to  me  confidentially 
—  professionally,  as  my  aunt's  agent  —  and  therefore  — " 

"  Do  you  mean  that  you  know  nothing  about  his  people?  " 

"I  suppose  it  might  be  stated,  crudely,  in  that  way, 
but  —  " 

"And  knowing  nothing  about  who  or  what  he  was,  you 
simply  picked  him  up  at  the  boarding-house,  and  admitted 
him  to  your  friendship?" 

"  Picking-up  is  not  the  word  that  the  most  careful  mothers 
employ,  in  reference  to  their  daughters'  attitude  toward 
young  men.  Mother,  don't  you  understand?  I'm  a  demo 
crat." 

"  It  is  not  a  thing,"  said  Mrs.  Weyland,  with  some  asper 
ity,  "for  a  lady  to  be." 


QUEED  273 

Sharlee,  fixing  her  hair  in  the  back  before  the  mirror, 
laughed  long  and  merrily.  "Do  you  dare — do  you  dare 
look  your  own  daughter  in  the  eye  and  say  she  is  no  lady?" 

"  Do  you  like  this  young  man?  "  Mrs.  Weyland  continued. 

"He  interests  me,  heaps  and  heaps." 

Mrs.  Weyland  sighed.  "I  can  only  say,"  she  observed, 
sinking  into  a  chair  and  picking  up  her  book,  "that  such 
goings  on  were  never  heard  of  in  my  day." 


XXII 

In  which  Professor  Nicolovius  drops  a  Letter  on  the  Floor,  and 
Queed  conjectures  that  Happiness  sometimes  comes  to  Men 
wearing  a  Strange  Face. 

QUEED  sat  alone  in  the  sitting-room  of  the  Duke  of 
Gloucester  Street  house.  His  afternoon's  experiences 
had  interested  him  largely.  By  subtle  and  occult 
processes  which  defied  his  analysis,  what  he  had  seen  and 
heard  had  proved  mysteriously  disturbing  —  all  this  out 
pouring  of  irrational  sentiment  in  which  he  had  no  share. 
So  had  his  conversation  with  the  girl  disturbed  him.  He 
was  in  a  condition  of  mental  unrest,  undefined  but  acute ; 
odds  and  ends  of  curious  thought  kicked  about  within  him, 
challenging  him  to  follow  them  down  to  unexplored  depths. 
But  he  was  paying  no  attention  to  them  now. 

He  sat  in  the  sitting-room,  wondering  how  Nicolovius  had 
ever  happened  to  think  of  that  story  about  the  Fenian 
refugee. 

For  Queed  had  been  gradually  driven  to  that  unpleasant 
point.  While  living  in  the  old  man's  house,  he  was,  despite 
his  conscientious  efforts,  virtually  spying  upon  him. 

The  Fenian  story  had  always  had  its  questionable  points; 
but  so  long  as  the  two  men  were  merely  chance  fellow-board 
ers,  it  did  as  well  as  any  other.  Now  that  they  lived  together, 
however,  the  multiplying  suggestions  that  the  old  profes 
sor  was  something  far  other  than  he  pretended  became  rather 
important.  The  young  man  could  not  help  being  aware  that 
Nicolovius  neither  looked  nor  talked  in  the  slightest  degree 
like  an  Irishman.  He  could  not  help  being  certain  that  an 
Irishman  who  had  fled  to  escape  punishment  for  a  political 
crime,  in  1882,  could  have  safely  returned  to  his  country  long 
ago;  and  would  undoubtedly  have  kept  up  relations  with 


QUEED  275 

his  friends  overseas  in  the  meantime.  Nor  could  he  help  being 
struck  with  such  facts  as  that  Nicolovius,  while  apparently 
little  interested  in  the  occasional  cables  about  Irish  affairs, 
had  become  seemingly  absorbed  in  the  three  days'  doings 
of  the  United  Confederate  Veterans. 

Now  it  was  entirely  all  right  for  the  old  man  to  have  a 
secret,  and  keep  it.  There  was  not  the  smallest  quarrel  on 
that  score.  But  it  was  not  in  the  least  all  right  for  one  man 
to  live  with  another,  pretending  to  believe  in  him,  when  in 
reality  he  was  doubting  and  questioning  him  at  every  move. 
The  want  of  candor  involved  in  his  present  relations  with 
Nicolovius  continually  fretted  Queed's  conscience.  Ought 
he  not  in  common  honesty  to  tell  the  old  man  that  he  could 
not  believe  the  Irish  biography,  leaving  it  to  him  to  decide 
what  he  wanted  to  do  about  it? 

Nicolovius,  tramping  in  only  a  few  minutes  behind  Queed» 
greeted  his  young  friend  as  blandly  as  ever.  Physically,  he 
seemed  tired;  much  dust  of  city  streets  clung  to  his  com 
monly  spotless  boots;  but  his  eyes  were  so  extraordinarily 
brilliant  that  Queed  at  first  wondered  if  he  could  have  been 
drinking.  However,  this  thought  died  almost  as  soon  as  it 
was  born. 

The  professor  walked  over  to  the  window  and  stood  looking 
out,  hat  on  head.  Presently  he  said:  "You  saw  the  grand 
parade,  I  suppose?  For  indeed  there  was  no  escaping  it." 

Queed  said  that  he  had  seen  it. 

"You  had  a  good  place  to  see  it  from,  I  hope?" 

Excellent;  Miss  Wey land's  porch. 

"Ah!"  said  Nicolovius,  with  rather  an  emphasis,  and  per 
mitted  a  pause  to  fall.  "A  most  charming  young  lady  — 
charming,"  he  went  on,  with  his  note  of  velvet  irony  which 
the  young  man  peculiarly  disliked.  "I  hear  she  is  to  marry 
your  Mr.  West.  An  eminently  suitable  match  in  every  way. 
Yet  I  shall  not  soon  forget  how  that  delightful  young  man 
defrauded  you  of  the  editorship." 

Silence  from  Mr.  Queed,  the  question  of  the  editorship 
having  already  been  thoroughly  threshed  out  between  them. 


276  QUEED 

"I,  too,  saw  the  gallant  proceedings,"  resumed  Nicolo- 
vius,  retracing  his  thought.  "What  an  outfit!  What  an  out 
fit!" 

He  dropped  down  into  his  easy  chair  by  the  table,  removed 
his  straw  hat  with  traces  of  a  rare  irritation  in  his  manner, 
put  on  his  black  skull  cap,  and  presently  purred  his  thoughts 
aloud :  — 

"No  writer  has  yet  done  anything  like  justice  to  the  old 
soldier  cult  in  the  post-bellum  South.  Doubtless  it  may  lie 
out  of  the  province  of  you  historians,  but  what  a  theme 
for  a  new  Thackeray !  With  such  a  fetish  your  priestcraft 
of  the  Middle  Ages  is  not  to  be  compared  for  a  moment. 
There  is  no  parallel  among  civilized  nations ;  to  find  one  you 
must  go  to  theVoodooism  of  the  savage  black.  For  more 
than  a  generation  all  the  intelligence  of  the  South  has  been 
asked,  nay  compelled,  to  come  and  bow  down  before  these 
alms-begging  loblollies.  To  refuse  to  make  obeisance  was 
treason.  The  entire  public  thought  of  a  vast  section  of  the 
country  has  revolved  around  the  figure  of  a  worthless  old 
grafter  in  a  tattered  gray  shirt.  Every  question  is  settled 
when  some  moth-eaten  ne'er-do-well  lets  out  what  is  known 
as  a  'rebel  yell.'  The  most  polished  and  profound  speech 
conceivable  is  answered  when  a  jackass  mounts  the  platform 
and  brays  out  something  about  the  gallant  boys  in  gray. 
The  cry  for  progress,  for  material  advancement,  for  moral 
and  social  betterment,  is  stifled,  that  everybody  may  have 
breath  to  shout  for  a  flapping  trouser's  leg  worn  by  a  de 
graded  old  sot.  All  that  your  Southern  statesmen  have  had 
to  give  a  people  who  were  stripped  to  the  bone  is  fulsome 
rhetoric  about  the  Wounded  Warrior  of  Wahoo,  or  some  other 
inflated  nonentity,  whereupon  the  mesmerized  population 
have  loyally  fallen  on  their  faces  and  shouted,  'Praise  the 
Lord.'  And  all  the  while  they  were  going  through  this 
wretched  mummery,  they  were  hungry  and  thirsty  and 
naked  —  destitute  in  a  smiling  land  of  plenty.  Do  you  won 
der  that  I  think  old-sold ierism  is  the  meanest  profession  the 
Lord  ever  suffered  to  thrive?  I  tell  you  Baal  and  Moloch 


QUEED  277 

never  took  such  toll  of  their  idolaters  as  these  shabby  old 
gods  of  the  gray  shirt." 

"Professor  Nicolovius,"  said  Queed,  with  a  slow  smile, 
"where  on  earth  do  you  exhume  your  ideas  of  Southern  his 
tory?" 

"Observation,  my  dear  boy  !  God  bless  us,  have  n't  I  had 
three  years  of  this  city  to  use  my  eyes  and  ears  in?  And  I  had 
a  peculiar  training  in  my  youth,"  he  added,  retrospectively, 
"to  fit  me  to  see  straight  and  generalize  accurately." 

.  .  .  Could  n't  the  man  see  that  no  persecuted  Irishman 
ever  talked  in  such  a  way  since  the  world  began?  If  he  had 
a  part  to  play,  why  in  the  name  of  common  sense  could  n't 
he  play  it  respectably? 

Queed  got  up,  and  began  strolling  about  the  floor.  In  his 
mind  was  what  Sharlee  Weyland  had  said  to  him  two  hours 
before:  "All  the  bitterness  nowadays  comes  from  the  non- 
combatants,  the  camp-followers,  the  sutlers,  and  the  cow 
ards."  Under  which  of  these  heads  did  his  friend,  the  old 
professor,  fall?  .  .  .  Why  had  he  ever  thought  of  Nico 
lovius  as,  perhaps,  a  broken  Union  officer?  A  broken  Union 
officer  would  feel  bitter,  if  at  all,  against  the  Union.  A  man 
who  felt  so  bitter  against  the  South  — 

A  resolution  was  rapidly  hardening  in  the  young  man's 
mind.  He  felt  this  attitude  of  doubt  and  suspicion,  these 
thoughts  that  he  was  now  thinking  about  the  man  whose 
roof  he  shared,  as  an  unclean  spot  upon  his  chaste  pas 
sion  for  truth.  He  could  not  feel  honest  again  until  he 
had  wiped  it  off.  .  .  .  And,  after  all,  what  did  he  owe  to 
Nicolovius? 

"But  I  must  not  leave  you  under  the  impression,"  said 
Nicolovius,  almost  testily  for  him,  "that  my  ideas  are  unique 
and  extraordinary.  They  are  shared,  in  fact,  by  Southern 
historians  of  repute  and — " 

Queed  turned  on  him.  "But  you  never  read  Southern 
historians." 

Nicolovius  had  a  smile  for  that,  though  his  expression 
seemed  subtly  to  shift.  "I  must  make  confession  to  you. 


278  QUEED 

Three  days  ago,  I  broke  the  habits  of  quarter  of  a  century.  At 
the  second-hand  shop  on  Centre  Street  I  bought,  actually,  a 
little  volume  of  history.  It  is  surprising  how  these  Southern 
manifestations  have  interested  me." 

Queed  was  an  undesirable  person  for  any  man  to  live  with 
who  had  a  secret  to  keep.  His  mind  was  relentlessly  con 
structive;  it  would  build  you  up  the  whole  dinosaur  from 
the  single  left  great  digitus.  For  apparently  no  reason  at  all, 
there  had  popped  into  his  head  a  chance  remark  of  Major 
Brooke's  a  year  ago,  which  he  had  never  thought  of  from 
that  day  to  this:  "I  can't  get  over  thinking  that  I've  seen 
that  man  before  a  long  time  ago,  when  he  looked  entirely 
different,  and  yet  somehow  the  same  too." 

"I  will  show  you  my  purchase,"  added  Nicolovius,  after 
a  moment  of  seeming  irresolution. 

He  disappeared  down  the  hall  to  his  bedroom,  a  retreat 
in  which  Queed  had  never  set  foot,  and  returned  promptly 
carrying  a  dingy  duodecimo  in  worn  brown  leather.  As  he 
entered  the  room,  he  absently  raised  the  volume  to  his  lips 
and  blew  along  the  edges. 

Queed 's  mental  processes  were  beyond  his  own  control. 
"Three  days  old,"  flashed  into  his  mind,  "and  he  blows  dust 
from  it." 

"What  is  the  book?"  he  asked. 

"A  very  able  little  history  of  the  Reconstruction  era  in 
this  State.  I  have  a  mind  to  read  you  a  passage  and  convert 
you." 

Nicolovius  sat  down,  and  began  turning  the  pages.  Queed 
stood  a  step  away,  watching  him  intently.  The  old  man 
fluttered  the  leaves  vaguely  for  a  moment ;  then  his  expres 
sion  shifted  and,  straightening  up,  he  suddenly  closed  the 
book. 

"I  don't  appear  to  find,"  he  said  easily,  "the  little  pas 
sage  that  so  impressed  me  the  day  before  yesterday.  And 
after  all,  what  would  be  the  use  of  reading  it  to  you?  You  im 
petuous  young  men  will  never  listen  to  the  wisdom  of  your 
elders." 


QUEED  279 

Smiling  blandly,  the  subject  closed,  it  might  have  been  for 
ever,  Nicolovius  reached  out  toward  the  table  to  flick  the 
ash  from  his  cigarette.  In  so  doing,  as  luck  had  it,  he  struck 
the  book  and  knocked  it  from  his  knees.  Something  shook 
from  its  pages  as  it  dropped,  and  fell  almost  at  Queed's  feet. 
Mechanically  he  stooped  to  pick  it  up. 

It  was  a  letter,  at  any  rate  an  envelope,  and  it  had  fallen 
face  up,  full  in  the  light  of  the  open  window.  The  envelope 
bore  an  address,  in  faded  ink,  but  written  in  a  bold  legible 
hand.  Not  to  save  his  soul  could  Queed  have  avoided  seeing  it : 

Henry  G.  Surface,  Esq., 
36  Washington  Street. 

There  was  a  dead  silence:  a  silence  that  from  matter-of- 
fact  suddenly  became  unendurable. 

Queed  handed  the  envelope  to  Nicolovius.  Nicolovius 
glanced  at  it,  while  pretending  not  to,  and  his  eyelash  flick 
ered;  his  face  was  about  the  color  of  cigar  ashes.  Queed 
walked  away,  waiting. 

He  expected  that  the  old  man  would  immediately  demand 
whether  he  had  seen  that  name  and  address,  or  at  least  would 
immediately  say  something.  But  he  did  nothing  of  the  sort. 
When  Queed  turned  at  the  end  of  the  room,  Nicolovius  was 
fluttering  the  pages  of  his  book  again,  apparently  absorbed 
in  it,  apparently  quite  forgetting  that  he  had  just  laid  it 
aside.  Then  Queed  understood.  Nicolovius  did  not  mean  to 
say  or  do  anything.  He  meant  to  pass  over  the  little  inci 
dent  altogether. 

However,  the  pretense  had  now  reached  a  point  when 
Queed  could  no  longer  endure  it. 

"Perhaps,  after  all,"  said  Nicolovius,  in  his  studiously 
bland  voice,  "I  am  a  little  sweeping  — " 

Queed  stood  in  front  of  him,  interrupting,  suddenly  not  at 
ease.  "Professor  Nicolovius." 

"Yes?" 

" 1  must  say  something  that  will  offend  you,  I  'm  afraid. 


280  QUEED 

For  some  time  I  have  found  myself  unable  to  believe 
the  —  story  of  your  life  you  were  once  good  enough  to 
give  me." 

"Ah,  well,"  said  Nicolovius,  engrossed  in  his  book,  "it  is 
not  required  of  you  to  believe  it.  We  need  have  no  quarrel 
about  that." 

Suddenly  Queed  found  that  he  hated  to  give  the  stab,  but 
he  did  not  falter. 

"I  must  be  frank  with  you,  professor.  I  saw  whom  that 
envelope  was  addressed  to  just  now." 

"Nor  need  we  quarrel  about  that." 

But  Queed 's  steady  gaze  upon  him  presently  grew  un 
bearable,  and  at  last  the  old  man  raised  his  head. 

"Well?   Whom  was  it  addressed  to?" 

Queed  felt  disturbingly  sorry  for  him,  and,  in  the  same 
thought,  admired  his  iron  control.  The  old  professor's  face 
was  gray;  his  very  lips  were  colorless;  but  his  eyes  were 
steady,  and  his  voice  was  the  voice  of  every  day. 

"I  think,"  said  Queed,  quietly,  "that  it  is  addressed  to 
you." 

There  was  a  lengthening  silence  while  the  two  men,  mo 
tionless,  looked  into  each  other's  eyes.  The  level  gaze  of 
each  held  just  the  same  look  of  faint  horror,  horror  subdued 
and  controlled,  but  still  there.  Their  stare  became  fascinated ; 
it  ran  on  as  though  nothing  could  ever  happen  to  break  it  off. 
To  Queed  it  seemed  as  if  everything  in  the  world  had  dropped 
away  but  those  brilliant  eyes,  frightened  yet  unafraid,  bor 
ing  into  his. 

Nicolovius  broke  the  silence.  The  triumph  of  his  intelli 
gence  over  his  emotions  showed  in  the  fact  that  he  attempted 
no  denial. 

"Well?"  he  said  somewhat  thickly.    "Well? —  Well?" 

Under  the  look  of  the  younger  man,  he  was  beginning  to 
break.  Into  the  old  eyes  had  sprung  a  deadly  terror,  a  look 
as  though  his  immortal  soul  might  hang  on  what  the  young 
man  was  going  to  say  next.  To  answer  this  look,  a  blind  im 
pulse  in  Queed  bade  him  strike  out,  to  say  or  do  something; 


QUEED  281 

and  his  reason,  which  was  always  detached  and  impersonal, 
was  amazed  to  hear  his  voice  saying :  — 

"  It 's  all  right,  professor.  Not  a  thing  is  going  to  happen." 

The  old  man  licked  his  lips.  "You  .  .  .  will  stay  on 
here?" 

And  Queed 's  voice  answered:  "As  long  as  you  want  me." 

Nicolovius,  who  had  been  born  Surface,  suffered  a  mo 
ment  of  collapse.  He  fell  back  in  his  chair,  and  covered  his 
face  with  his  hands. 

The  dying  efforts  of  the  June  sun  still  showed  in  the  pretty 
sitting-room,  though  the  town  clocks  were  striking  seven. 
From  without  floated  in  the  voices  of  merry  passers ;  eddies 
of  the  day's  celebration  broke  even  into  this  quiet  street. 
Queed  sat  down  in  a  big-armed  rocker,  and  looked  out  the 
window  into  the  pink  west. 

So,  in  a  minute's  time  and  by  a  wholly  chance  happening, 
the  mystery  was  out  at  last.  Professor  Nicolovius,  the  bland 
recluse  of  Mrs.  Paynter's,  and  Henry  G.  Surface,  political 
arch-traitor,  ex-convict,  and  falsest  of  false  friends,  were  one 
and  the  same  man. 

The  truth  had  been  instantly  plain  to  Queed  when  the 
name  had  blazed  up  at  him  from  the  envelope  on  the  floor. 
It  was  as  though  Fate  herself  had  tossed  that  envelope  under 
his  eyes,  as  the  answer  to  all  his  questionings.  Not  an  in 
stant's  doubt  had  troubled  him ;  and  now  a  score  of  memories 
were  marshaling  themselves  before  him  to  show  that  his  first 
flashing  certainty  had  been  sound.  As  for  the  book,  it  was 
clearly  from  the  library  of  the  old  man's  youth,  kept  and 
hidden  away  for  some  reason,  when  nearly  everything  else 
had  been  destroyed.  Between  the  musty  pages  the  accusing 
letter  had  lain  forgotten  for  thirty  years,  waiting  for  this 
moment. 

He  turned  and  glanced  once  at  the  silent  figure,  huddled 
back  in  the  chair  with  covered  eyes;  the  unhappy  old  man 
whom  nobody  had  ever  trusted  without  regretting  it.  Henry 
G.  Surface  —  whose  name  was  a  synonym  for  those  traits 
and  things  which  honest  men  of  all  peoples  and  climes  have 


282  QUEED 

always  hated  most,  treachery,  perfidy,  base  betrayal  of 
trust,  shameful  dishonesty  —  who  had  crowded  the  word 
infamy  from  the  popular  lexicon  of  politics  with  the  keener, 
more  biting  epithet,  Surfaceism.  And  here  —  wonder  of 
wonders  —  sat  Surface  before  him,  drawn  back  to  the  scene 
of  his  fall  like  a  murderer  to  the  body  and  the  scarlet  stain 
upon  the  floor,  caught,  trapped,  the  careful  mask  of  many 
years  plucked  from  him  at  a  sudden  word,  leaving  him  no 
covering  upon  earth  but  his  smooth  white  hands.  And  he, 
Queed,  was  this  man's  closest,  his  only  friend,  chosen  out 
of  all  the  world  to  live  with  him  and  minister  to  his  declin 
ing  years.  .  .  . 

"It's  true!"  now  broke  through  the  concealing  hands. 
"I  am  that  man.  .  .  .  God  help  me!" 

Queed  looked  unseeingly  out  of  the  window,  where  the  sun 
was  couching  in  a  bed  of  copper  flame  stippled  over  with 
brightest  azure.  Why  had  he  done  it?  What  crazy 
prompting  had  struck  from  him  that  promise  to  yoke  his 
destiny  forever  with  this  terrible  old  man?  If  Nicolovius, 
the  Fenian  refugee,  had  never  won  his  liking,  Surface,  the 
Satan  apostate,  was  detestable  to  him.  What  devil  of  im 
pulse  had  trapped  from  him  the  mad  offer  to  spend  his  days 
in  the  company  of  such  a  creature,  and  in  the  shadow  of  so 
odious  an  ill-fame? 

As  on  the  day  when  Fifi  had  asked  him  her  innocent  ques 
tion  about  altruism,  a  sudden  tide  swept  the  young  man's 
thoughts  inward.  And  after  them,  this  time,  groped  the 
blundering  feet  of  his  spirit. 

Here  was  he,  a  mature  man,  who,  in  point  of  work,  in 
all  practical  and  demonstrable  ways,  was  the  millionth 
man.  He  was  a  great  editorial  writer,  which  was  a  minor 
but  genuine  activity.  He  was  a  yet  greater  writer  on  social 
science,  which  was  one  of  the  supreme  activities.  On  this 
side,  then,  certainly  the  chief  side,  there  could  be  no  question 
about  the  successfulness  of  his  life.  His  working  life  was,  or 
would  be  before  he  was  through,  brilliantly  successful.  But 
it  had  for  some  time  been  plain  to  him  that  he  stopped  short 


QUEED  283 

there.  He  was  a  great  workman,  but  that  was  all.  He  was  a 
superb  rationalist ;  but  after  that  he  did  not  exist. 

Through  the  science  of  Human  Intercourse,  he  saw  much 
more  of  people  now  than  he  had  ever  done  before,  and  thus 
it  had  become  driven  home  upon  him  that  most  people  had 
two  lives,  their  outer  or  practical  lives,  and  their  inner  or 
personal  lives.  But  he  himself  had  but  one  life.  He  was  a 
machine ;  a  machine  which  turned  out  matchless  work  for 
the  enlightenment  of  the  world,  but  after  all  a  machine.  He 
was  intellect.  He  was  Pure  Reason.  Yet  he  himself  had  said, 
and  written,  that  intellectual  supremacy  was  not  the  true 
badge  of  supremacy  of  type.  There  was  nothing  sure  of  races 
that  was  not  equally  sure  of  the  individuals  which  make  up 
those  races.  Yet  intellect  was  all  he  was.  Vast  areas  of 
thought,  feeling,  and  conduct,  in  which  the  people  around 
him  spent  so  much  of  their  time,  were  entirely  closed  to  him. 
He  had  no  personal  life  at  all.  That  part  of  him  had  atrophied 
from  lack  of  use,  like  the  eyes  of  the  mole  and  of  those  sight 
less  fishes  men  take  from  the  waters  of  caverns. 

And  now  this  part  of  him,  which  had  for  some  time  been 
stirring  uneasily,  had  risen  suddenly  without  bidding  of 
his  and  in  defiance  of  his  reason,  and  laid  hold  of  something 
in  his  environment.  In  doing  so,  it  appeared  to  have  thrust 
upon  him  an  inner,  or  personal,  life  from  this  time  forward. 
That  life  lay  in  being  of  use  to  the  old  man  before  him :  he  who 
had  never  been  of  personal  use  to  anybody  so  far,  and  the 
miserable  old  man  who  had  no  comfort  anywhere  but  in  him. 

He  knew  the  scientific  name  of  this  kind  of  behavior  very 
well.  It  was  altruism,  the  irrational  force  that  had  put  a 
new  face  upon  the  world.  Fifi,  he  remembered  well,  had  as 
sured  him  that  in  altruism  he  would  find  that  fiercer  happi 
ness  which  was  as  much  better  than  content  as  being  well 
was  better  than  not  being  sick.  But  .  .  .  could  this  be 
happiness,  this  whirling  confusion  that  put  him  to  such 
straits  to  keep  a  calm  face  above  the  tumult  of  his  breast? 
If  this  was  happiness,  then  it  came  to  him  for  their  first 
meeting  wearing  a  strange  face.  .  .  . 


284  QUEED 

"You  know  the  story?" 

Queed  moved  in  his  chair.    "Yes.    I  —  have  heard  it." 

"Of  course,"  said  Nicolovius.  "It  is  as  well  known  as 
Iscariot's.  By  God,  how  they've  hounded  me!" 

Evidently  he  was  recovering  fast.  There  was  bitterness, 
rather  than  shame,  in  his  voice.  He  took  his  hands  from  his 
eyes,  adjusted  his  cap,  stiffened  up  in  his  chair.  The  sallow 
tints  were  coming  back  into  his  face;  his  lips  took  on  color; 
his  eye  and  hand  were  steady.  Not  every  man  could  have 
passed  through  such  a  cataclysm  and  emerged  so  little 
marked.  He  picked  up  his  cigarette  from  the  table;  it  was 
still  going.  This  fact  was  symbolic :  the  great  shock  had  come 
and  passed  within  the  smoking  of  an  inch  of  cigarette.  The 
pretty  room  was  as  it  was  before.  Pale  sunshine  still  flick 
ered  on  the  swelling  curtain.  The  leather  desk-clock  gayly 
ticked  the  passing  seconds.  The  young  man's  clean-cut  face 
looked  as  quiet  as  ever. 

Upon  Queed  the  old  man  fastened  his  fearless  black  eyes. 

"  I  meant  to  tell  you  all  this  some  day,"  he  said,  in  quite 
a  natural  voice.  "Now  the  day  has  come  a  little  sooner  than 
I  had  meant  —  that  is  all.  I  know  that  my  confidence  is  safe 
with  you  —  till  I  die." 

"I  think  you  have  nothing  to  fear  by  trusting  me,"  said 
Queed,  and  added  at  once:  "But  you  need  tell  me  nothing 
unless  you  prefer." 

A  kind  of  softness  shone  for  a  moment  in  Surface's  eyes. 
"Nobody  could  look  at  your  face,"  he  said  gently,  "and  ever 
be  afraid  to  trust  you." 

The  telephone  rang,  and  Queed  could  answer  it  by  merely 
putting  out  his  hand.  It  was  West,  from  the  office,  asking 
that  he  report  for  work  that  night,  as  he  himself  was  com 
pelled  to  be  away. 

Presently  Surface  began  talking;  talking  in  snatches, 
more  to  himself  than  to  his  young  friend,  rambling  back 
ward  over  his  broken  life  in  passionate  reminiscence.  He 
talked  a  long  time  thus,  while  the  daylight  faded  and  dusk 
crept  into  the  room,  and  then  night;  and  Queed  listened,  giv- 


QUEED  285 

ing  him  all  the  rein  he  wanted  and  saying  never  a  word  him 
self. 

".  .  .  Pray  your  gods,"  said  Surface,  "that  you  never 
have  such  reason  to  hate  your  fellow-men  as  I  have  had,  my 
boy.  For  that  has  been  the  keynote  of  my  unhappy  life. 
God,  how  I  hated  them  all,  and  how  I  do  yet!  .  .  .  Not 
least  Weyland,  with  his  ostentatious  virtue,  his  holier-than- 
thou  kindness,  his  self-righteous  magnanimity  tossed  even 
to  me  .  .  .  the  broken-kneed  idol  whom  others  passed  with 
averted  face,  and  there  was  none  so  poor  to  do  me  rever 
ence.  .  .  ." 

So  this,  mused  Queed,  was  the  meaning  of  the  old  pro 
fessor's  invincible  dislike  for  Miss  Weyland,  which  he  had 
made  so  obvious  in  the  boarding-house  that  even  Mr.  By- 
lash  commented  on  it.  He  had  never  been  able  to  forgive 
her  father's  generosity,  which  he  had  so  terribly  betrayed; 
her  name  and  her  blood  rankled  and  festered  eternally  in  the 
heart  of  the  faithless  friend  and  the  striped  trustee. 

Henderson,  the  ancient  African  who  attended  the  two 
men,  knocked  upon  the  shut  door  with  the  deprecatory  an 
nouncement  that  he  had  twice  rung  the  supper-bell. 

"Take  the  things  back  to  the  kitchen,  Henderson,"  said 
Queed.  "  I  '11  ring  when  we  are  ready." 

The  breeze  was  freshening,  blowing  full  upon  Surface,  who 
did  not  appear  to  notice  it.  Queed  got  up  and  lowered  the 
window.  The  old  man's  neglected  cigarette  burned  his  fin 
gers;  he  lit  another;  it,  too,  burned  itself  down  to  the  cork- 
tip  without  receiving  the  attention  of  a  puff. 

Presently  he  went  on  talking: 

"  I  was  of  a  high-spirited  line.  Thank  God,  I  never  learned 
to  fawn  on  the  hand  that  lashed  me.  Insult  I  would  not 
brook.  I  struck  back,  and  when  I  struck,  I  struck  to  kill. 
—  Did  I  not?  So  hard  that  the  State  reeled.  ...  So  hard 
that  if  I  had  had  something  better  than  mean  negroes  and 
worse  whites  for  my  tools,  fifth-rate  scavengers,  buzzards 
of  politics  .  .  .  this  hand  would  have  written  the  history 
of  the  State  in  these  forty  years. 


286  QUEED 

"That  was  the  way  I  struck,  and  how  did  they  answer 
me?  —  Ostracism  .  .  .  Coventry  .  .  .  The  weapons  of  mean 
old  women,  and  dogs.  .  .  .  The  dogs!  That  is  what  they 
were.  .  .  . 

"Well,  other  arms  were  ready  to  receive  me.  Others  were 
fairer-minded  than  the  cowardly  bigots  who  could  blow  hot 
or  cold  as  their  selfish  interests  and  prostituted  leaders 
whispered.  I  was  not  a  man  to  be  kept  down.  Oh,  my 
new  friends  were  legion,  and  I  was  king  again.  But  it  was 
never  the  same.  In  that  way,  they  beat  me.  I  give  them 
that.  .  .  .  Not  they,  though.  It  was  deep  calling  to  deep. 
My  blood — heritage  —  tradition  —  education  —  all  that  I 
was  .  .  .  this  was  what  tortured  me  with  what  was  gone, 
and  kept  calling. 

"  Wicked  injustice  and  a  lost  birthright.  .  .  .  Oh,  memory 
was  there  to  crucify  me,  by  day  and  by  night.  And  yet  .  .  . 
Why,  it  was  a  thing  that  is  done  every  day  by  men  these 
people  say  their  prayers  to.  .  .  .  Oh,  yes  —  I  wanted  to 
punish  —  him  for  his  smug  condescension,  his  patronizing 
playing  of  the  good  Samaritan.  And  through  him  all  these 
others  .  .  .  show  them  that  their  old  idol  wore  claws  on 
those  feet  of  clay.  But  not  in  that  way.  No,  a  much 
cleverer  way  than  that.  Perhaps  there  would  be  no  money 
when  they  asked  for  it,  but  I  was  to  smile  blandly  and  go  on 
about  my  business.  They  were  never  to  reach  me.  But  the 
Surfaces  were  never  skilled  at  juggling  dirty  money.  .  .  . 

"  They  took  me  off  my  guard.  The  most  technical  fault  — 
a  trifle.  .  .  .  Another  day  or  two  and  everything  would  have 
been  all  right.  They  had  my  word  for  it  —  and  you  know 
how  they  replied.  .  .  .  The  infamous  tyranny  of  the  majority. 
The  greatest  judicial  crime  in  a  decade,  and  they  laughed. 

"So  now  I  lie  awake  in  the  long  nights  with  nine  years  of 
that  to  look  back  on. 

"Let  my  life  be  a  lesson  to  you  teaching  you  —  if  no 
thing  else  —  that  it  is  of  no  use  to  fight  society.  They  have 
a  hopeless  advantage,  the  contemptible  advantage  of  num 
bers,  and  they  are  not  ashamed  to  use  it.  .  .  .But  my  spirit 


QUEED  287 

would  not  let  me  lie  quiet  under  injury  and  insult.  I  was 
ever  a  fighter,  born  to  die  with  my  spurs  on.  And  when  I  die 
at  last,  they  will  find  that  I  go  with  a  Parthian  shot  .  .  . 
and  after  all  have  the  last  word. 

"So  I  came  out  into  a  bright  world  again,  an  old  man 
before  my  time,  ruined  forever,  marked  with  a  scarlet  mark 
to  wear  to  my  grave.  .  .  . 

"And  then  in  time,  as  of  course  it  would,  the  resolve  came 
to  me  to  come  straight  back  here  to  die.  A  man  wants  to 
die  among  his  own  people.  They  were  all  that  ever  meant 
anything  to  me  —  they  have  that  to  boast  of.  ...  I  loved 
this  city  once.  To  die  anywhere  else  .  .  .  why,  it  was  mean 
ingless,  a  burlesque  on  death.  I  looked  at  my  face  in  the 
glass ;  my  own  mother  would  not  have  known  me.  And  so  I 
came  straight  to  Jennie  Paynter's,  such  was  my  whim  .  .  . 
whom  I  held  on  my  knee  fifty  years  ago. 

".  .  .  Oh,  it's  been  funny  ...  so  funny.  ...  to  sit  at 
that  intolerable  table,  and  hear  poor  old  Brooke  on  Recon 
struction. 

"And  I  've  wondered  what  little  Jennie  Paynter  would  do, 
if  I  had  risen  on  one  of  these  occasions  and  spoken  my  name 
to  the  table.  How  I  Ve  hated  her  —  hated  the  look  and  sight 
of  her  —  and  all  the  while  embracing  it  for  dear  life.  She  has 
told  me  much  that  she  never  knew  I  listened  to  —  many  a 
bit  about  old  friends  .  .  .  forty  years  since  I  'd  heard  their 
names.  And  Brooke  has  told  me  much,  the  doting  old  ass. 

"But  the  life  grew  unbearable  to  a  man  of  my  temper.  I 
could  afford  the  decency  of  privacy  in  my  old  age.  For  I 
had  worked  hard  and  saved  since.  .  .  . 

"And  then  you  came  ...  a  scholar  and  a  gentleman." 

It  was  quite  dark  in  the  room.  Surface's  voice  had  sud 
denly  changed.  The  bitterness  faded  out  of  it;  it  became 
gentler  than  Queed  had  ever  heard  it. 

"I  did  not  find  you  out  at  once.  My  life  had  made  me 
unsocial  —  and  out  of  the  Nazareth  of  that  house  I  never 
looked  for  any  good  to  come.  But  when  once  I  took  note  of 
you,  each  day  I  saw  you  clearer  and  truer.  I  saw  you  fight- 


288  QUEED 

ing,  and  asking  no  odds  —  for  elbow-room  to  do  your  own 
work,  for  your  way  up  on  the  newspaper,  for  bodily  strength 
and  health  —  everywhere  I  saw  you,  you  were  fighting  in 
domitably.  I  have  always  loved  a  fighter.  You  were  young 
and  a  stranger,  alone  like  me;  you  stirred  no  memories  of 
a  past  that  now,  in  my  age,  I  would  forget ;  your  face  was 
the  face  of  honor  and  truth.  I  thought:  What  a  blessing  if 
I  could  make  a  friend  of  this  young  man  for  the  little  while 
that  is  left  me!  .  .  .  And  you  have  been  a  blessing  and  a 
joy  —  more  than  you  can  dream.  And  now  you  will  not  cast 
me  off,  like  the  others.  ...  I  do  not  know  the  words  with 
which  to  try  to  thank  you.  .  .  ." 

"Oh,  don't,"  came  Queed's  voice  hastily  out  of  the  dark. 
''There  is  no  question  of  thanks  here." 

He  got  up,  lit  the  lamps,  pulled  down  the  shade.  The  old 
man  lay  back  in  his  chair,  his  hands  gripping  its  arms,  the 
lamplight  full  upon  him.  Never  had  Queed  seen  him  look 
less  inspiring  to  affection.  His  black  cap  had  gotten  pushed 
to  one  side,  which  both  revealed  a  considerable  area  of  hair 
less  head,  and  imparted  to  the  whole  face  an  odd  and  rakish 
air;  the  Italian  eyes  did  not  wholly  match  with  the  softness 
of  his  voice;  the  thin-lipped  mouth  under  the  long  auburn 
mustache  looked  neither  sorrowful  nor  kind.  It  was  Queed 's 
lifelong  habit  never  to  look  back  with  vain  regrets;  and  he 
needed  all  of  his  resolution  now. 

He  stood  in  front  of  the  man  whose  terrible  secret  he  had 
surprised,  and  outwardly  he  was  as  calm  as  ever. 

"Professor  Nicolovius,"  he  said,  with  a  faint  emphasis 
upon  the  name,  "all  this  is  as  though  it  had  never  passed 
between  us.  And  now  let's  go  and  get  some  supper." 

Surface  rose  to  his  height  and  took  Queed 's  hand  in  a  grip 
like  iron.  His  eyes  glistened  with  sudden  moisture. 

"God  bless  you,  boy!  You're  a  man  /" 

It  had  been  a  memorable  conversation  in  the  life  of  both 
men,  opening  up  obvious  after-lines  of  more  or  less  moment 
ous  thought.  Yet  each  of  them,  as  it  happened,  neglected 


QUEED  289 

these  lines  for  a  corollary  detail  of  apparently  much  less  seri 
ousness,  and  pretty  nearly  the  same  detail  at  that.  For  Sur 
face  sat  long  that  evening,  meditating  how  he  might  most 
surely  break  up  the  friendship  between  his  young  friend  and 
Sharlee  Weyland;  while  Queed,  all  during  his  busy  hours  at 
the  office,  found  his  thoughts  of  Nicolovius  dominated  by 
speculations  as  to  what  Miss  Weyland  would  say,  if  she  knew 
that  he  had  formed  a  lifelong  compact  with  the  man  who  had 
betrayed  her  father's  friendship  and  looted  her  own  fortune. 


XXIII 

Of  the  Bill  for  the  Reformatory,  and  its  Critical  Situation;  of 
West's  Second  Disappointment  with  the  Rewards  of  Patriot 
ism;  of  the  Consolation  he  found  in  the  most  Charming  Re 
solve  in  the  World. 

IN  January  the  legislature  met  again.  All  autumn  and 
early  winter  the  Post  had  been  pounding  without  sur 
cease  upon  two  great  issues :  first,  the  reform  of  the  tax- 
laws,  and,  second,  the  establishment  of  a  reformatory  insti 
tution  for  women.  It  was  palpably  the  resolve  of  the  paper 
that  the  legislature  should  not  overlook  these  two  measures 
through  lack  of  being  shown  where  its  duty  lay. 

To  the  assistant  editor  had  been  assigned  both  campaigns, 
and  he  had  developed  his  argument  with  a  deadly  persistence. 
A  legislature  could  no  more  ignore  him  than  you  could  ig 
nore  a  man  who  is  pounding  you  over  the  head  with  a  bed- 
slat.  Queed  had  proved  his  cases  in  a  dozen  ways,  histor 
ically  and  analogically,  politically,  morally,  and  scientifically, 
socially  and  sociologically.  Then,  for  luck,  he  proceeded 
to  run  through  the  whole  list  again  a  time  or  two;  and 
now  faithful  readers  of  the  Post  cried  aloud  for  mercy,  ask 
ing  each  other  what  under  the  sun  had  got  into  the  paper 
that  it  thus  massacred  and  mutilated  the  thrice-slain. 

But  the  Post,  aided  by  the  press  of  the  State  which  had  been 
captivated  by  its  ringing  logic,  continued  its  merciless  fire, 
and,  as  it  proved,  not  insanely.  For  when  the  legislature 
came  together,  it  turned  out  to  be  one  of  those  "economy" 
sessions,  periodically  thrust  down  the  throats  of  even  the 
wiliest  politicians.  Not  "progress"  was  its  watchword,  but 
"wise  retrenchment."  Every  observer  of  events,  espe 
cially  in  states  where  one  party  has  been  long  in  control,  is 
familiar  with  these  recurrent  manifestations.  There  is  a  long 


QUEED  291 

period  of  systematic  reduplication  of  the  offices,  multiplying 
generosity  to  the  faithful,  and  enormous  geometrical  pro 
gression  of  the  public  payroll.  Some  mishap,  one  day, 
focuses  attention  upon  the  princely  totalities  of  the  law-mak 
ing  spenders,  and  a  howl  goes  up  from  the  "sovereigns,"  who, 
as  has  been  wisely  observed,  never  have  any  power  until  they 
are  mad.  The  party  managers,  always  respectful  to  an  angry 
electorate,  thereupon  announce  that,  owing  to  the  wonder 
ful  period  of  progress  and  expansion  brought  about  by  their 
management,  the  State  can  afford  to  slow  up  for  a  brief 
period,  hold  down  expenses  and  enjoy  its  (party-made)  pros 
perity.  This  strikes  the  "keynote"  for  the  next  legislature, 
which  pulls  a  long  face,  makes  a  tremendous  noise  about 
"economy,"  and  possibly  refrains  from  increasing  expenses, 
or  even  shades  them  down  about  a  dollar  and  a  half.  Flushed 
with  their  victory,  the  innocent  sovereigns  return,  Cincin- 
natus-wise,  to  their  plows,  and  the  next  session  of  the  legis 
lature,  relieved  of  that  suspicionful  scrutiny  so  galling  to  men 
of  spirit,  proceeds  to  cut  the  purse-strings  loose  with  a  whoop. 
Such  a  brief  spasm  had  now  seized  the  State.  Expenses  had 
doubled  and  redoubled  with  a  velocity  which  caused  even 
hardened  prodigals  to  view  with  alarm.  The  number  of  com 
missions,  boards,  assistant  inspectors,  and  third  deputy 
clerks  was  enormous,  far  larger  than  anybody  realized.  If 
you  could  have  taken  a  biological  cross-section  through  the 
seat  of  State  Government,  you  would  doubtless  have  dis 
covered  a  most  amazing  number  of  unobtrusive  gentlemen 
with  queer  little  titles  and  odd  little  duties,  sitting  silent  and 
sleek  under  their  cover;  their  hungry  little  mouths  affixed 
last  year  to  the  public  breast,  or  two  years  ago,  or  twenty, 
and  ready  to  open  in  fearful  wailing  if  anybody  sought  to 
pluck  them  off.  In  an  aggregate  way,  attention  had  been 
called  to  them  during  the  gubernatorial  campaign  of  the 
summer.  Attacks  from  the  rival  stump  had,  of  course,  been 
successfully  "  answered  "  by  the  loyal  leaders  and  party  press. 
But  the  bare  statement  of  the  annual  expenditures,  as  com 
pared  with  the  annual  expenditures  of  ten  years  ago,  neces- 


292  QUEED 

sarily  stood,  and  in  cold  type  it  looked  bad.  Therefore  the 
legislature  met  now  for  an  "economy  session."  The  public 
was  given  to  understand  that  every  penny  would  have  to 
give  a  strict  account  of  itself  before  it  would  receive  a  pass 
from  the  treasury,  and  that  public  institutions,  asking  for  in 
creased  support,  could  consider  themselves  lucky  if  they  did 
not  find  their  appropriations  scaled  down  by  a  fourth  or  so. 

The  Post's  tax  reform  scheme  went  through  with  a  bang. 
Out  of  loose  odds  and  ends  of  vague  discontent,  Queed  had 
succeeded  in  creating  a  body  of  public  sentiment  that  be 
came  invincible.  Moreover,  this  scheme  cost  nothing.  On  the 
contrary,  by  a  rearrangement  of  items  and  a  stricter  system 
of  assessment,  it  promised,  as  the  Post  frequently  remarked, 
to  put  hundreds  of  thousands  into  the  treasury.  But  the  re 
formatory  was  a  horse  of  a  totally  different  color.  Here  was 
a  proposal,  for  a  mere  supposititious  moral  gain,  evanescent 
as  air,  to  take  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  of  hard  money 
out  of  the  crib,  and  saddle  the  State  with  an  annual  obliga 
tion,  to  boot.  An  excellent  thing  in  itself,  but  a  most  unrea 
sonable  request  of  an  economy  session,  said  the  organization 
leaders.  In  fact,  this  hundred  thousand  dollars  happened 
to  be  precisely  the  hundred  thousand  dollars  they  needed 
to  lubricate  "the  organization,"  and  discharge,  by  some 
choice  new  positions,  a  few  honorable  obligations  incurred 
during  the  campaign. 

Now  it  was  written  in  the  recesses  of  the  assistant  edi 
tor's  being,  those  parts  of  him  which  he  never  thought  of 
mentioning  to  anybody,  that  the  reformatory  bill  must  pass. 
Various  feelings  had  gradually  stiffened  an  early  general  ap 
proval  into  a  rock-ribbed  resolve.  It  was  on  a  closely  allied 
theme  that  he  had  first  won  his  editorial  spurs  —  the  theme 
of  Klinker's  "  blaggards,"  who  made  reformatories  necessary. 
That  was  one  thing :  a  kind  of  professional  sentiment  which 
the  sternest  scientist  need  not  be  ashamed  to  acknowledge. 
And  then,  beyond  that,  his  many  talks  with  Klinker  had  in 
vested  the  campaign  for  the  reformatory  with  a  warmth  of 
meaning  which  was  without  precedent  in  his  experience. 


QUEED  293 

This  was,  in  fact,  his  first  personal  contact  with  the  suffering 
and  sin  of  the  world,  his  first  grapple  with  a  social  problem 
in  the  raw.  Two  years  before,  when  he  had  offered  to  write 
an  article  on  this  topic  for  the  Assistant  Secretary  of  Chari 
ties,  his  interest  in  a  reformatory  had  been  only  the  scientific 
interest  which  the  trained  sociologist  feels  in  all  the  enginery 
of  social  reform.  But  now  this  institution  had  become  in- 
dissolubly  connected  in  Queed's  mind  with  the  case  of  Eva 
Bernheimer,  whom  Buck  Klinker  knew,  Eva  Bernheimer 
who  was  "in  trouble"  at  sixteen,  and  had  now  "dropped 
out."  A  reformatory  had  become  in  his  thought  a  living  in 
strument  to  catch  the  Eva  Bernheimers  of  this  world,  and 
effectually  prevent  them  from  dropping  out. 

And  apart  from  all  this,  here  was  the  first  chance  he  had 
ever  had  to  do  a  service  for  Sharlee  Weyland. 

However,  the  bill  stuck  obstinately  in  committee.  Now 
the  session  was  more  than  half  over,  February  was  nearly 
gone,  and  there  it  still  stuck.  And  when  it  finally  came  out, 
it  was  evidently  going  to  be  a  toss  of  a  coin  whether  it  would 
be  passed  by  half  a  dozen  votes,  or  beaten  by  an  equal  num 
ber.  But  there  was  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  great  ma 
jority  of  the  voters,  so  far  as  they  were  interested  in  it  at  all, 
wanted  it  passed,  and  the  tireless  Post  was  prodding  the 
committee  every  other  day,  observing  that  now  was  the  time, 
etc.,  and  demanding  in  a  hundred  forceful  ways,  how  about  it? 

With  cheerfulness  and  confidence  had  West  intrusted  these 
important  matters  to  his  young  assistant.  Not  only  was 
Queed  an  acknowledged  authority  on  both  taxation  and 
penological  science,  but  he  had  enjoyed  the  advantage  of 
writing  articles  on  both  themes  under  Colonel  Cowles's  per 
sonal  direction.  The  Colonel's  bones  were  dust,  his  pen  was 
rust,  his  soul  was  with  the  saints,  we  trust;  but  his  gallant 
spirit  went  marching  on.  He  towered  out  of  memory  a  demi 
god,  and  what  he  said  and  did  in  his  lifetime  had  become 
as  the  law  of  the  Medes  and  Persians  now. 

But  there  was  never  any  dispute  about  the  division  of  edi 
torial  honors  on  the  Post,  anyway.  The  two  young  men,  in 


294  QUEED 

fact,  were  so  different  in  every  way  that  their  relations  were 
a  model  of  mutual  satisfaction.  Never  once  did  Queed's 
popular  chief  seek  to  ride  over  his  valued  helper,  or  deny  him 
his  full  share  of  opportunity  in  the  department.  If  anything, 
indeed,  he  leaned  quite  the  other  way.  For  West  lacked  the 
plodder's  faculty  for  indefatigable  application.  Like  some 
rare  and  splendid  bird,  if  he  was  kept  too  closely  in  captiv 
ity,  his  spirit  sickened  and  died. 

It  is  time  to  admit  frankly  that  West,  upon  closer  con 
tact  with  newspaper  work,  had  been  somewhat  disillusioned,, 
and  who  that  knows  will  be  surprised  at  that?  To  begin 
with,  he  had  been  used  to  much  freedom,  and  his  new  duties 
were  extremely  confining.  They  began  soon  after  breakfast, 
and  no  man  could  say  at  what  hour  they  would  end.  The 
night  work,  in  especial,  he  abhorred.  It  interfered  with  much 
more  amusing  things  that  had  hitherto  beguiled  his  even 
ings,  and  it  also  conflicted  with  sleep,  of  which  he  required  a 
good  deal.  There  was,  too,  a  great  amount  of  necessary  but 
most  irksome  drudgery  connected  with  his  editorial  labors. 
Because  the  Post  was  a  leader  of  public  thought  in  the  State, 
and  as  such  enjoyed  a  national  standing,  West  found  it  ne 
cessary  to  read  a  vast  number  of  papers^to  keep  up  with  what 
was  going  on.  He  was  also  forced  to  write  many  perfunctory 
articles  on  subjects  which  did  not  interest  him  in  the  least, 
and  about  which,  to  tell  the  truth,  he  knew  very  little. 
There  were  also  a  great  many  letters  either  to  be  answered, 
or  to  be  prepared  for  publication  in  the  People's  Forum 
column,  and  these  letters  were  commonly  written  by  dull 
asses  who  had  no  idea  what  they  were  talking  about.  Prosy 
people  were  always  coming  in  with  requests  or  complaints, 
usually  the  latter.  First  and  last  there  was  a  quantity  of 
grinding  detail  which,  like  the  embittered  old  fogeyism  of 
the  Blaines  College  trustees,  had  not  appeared  on  his  rosy 
prospect  in  the  Maytime  preceding. 

With  everything  else  favorable,  West  would  cheerfully 
have  accepted  these  things,  as  being  inextricably  embedded 
in  the  nature  of  the  work.  But  unfortunately,  everything  else 


QUEED  295 

was  not  favorable.  Deeper  than  the  grind  of  the  routine  de 
tail,  was  the  constant  opposition  and  adverse  criticism  to 
which  his  newspaper,  like  every  other  one,  was  incessantly 
subjected.  It  has  long  been  a  trite  observation  that  no  reader 
of  any  newspaper  is  so  humble  as  not  to  be  outspokenly  con 
fident  that  he  could  run  that  paper  a  great  deal  better  than 
those  who  actually  are  running  it.  Every  upstanding  man 
who  pays  a  cent  for  a  daily  journal  considers  that  he  buys  the 
right  to  abuse  it,  nay  incurs  the  manly  duty  of  abusing  it. 
Every  editor  knows  that  the  highest  praise  he  can  expect  is 
silence.  If  his  readers  are  pleased  with  his  remarks,  they 
nobly  refrain  from  comment.  But  if  they  disagree  with  one 
jot  or  tittle  of  his  high-speed  dissertations,  he  must  be  pre 
pared  to  have  quarts  of  ink  squirted  at  him  forthwith. 

Now  this  was  exactly  the  reverse  of  Editor  West's  pre 
ferences.  He  liked  criticism  of  him  to  be  silent,  and  praise 
of  him  to  be  shouted  in  the  market-place.  For  all  his  good- 
humor  and  poise,  the  steady  fire  of  hostile  criticism  fretted 
him  intensely.  He  did  not  like  to  run  through  his  exchanges 
and  find  his  esteemed  contemporaries  combatting  his  posi 
tions,  sometimes  bitterly  or  contemptuously,  and  always, 
so  it  seemed  to  him,  unreasonably  and  unfairly.  He  did  not 
like  to  have  friends  stop  him  on  the  street  to  ask  why  in 
the  name  of  so-and-so  he  had  said  such-and-such ;  or,  more 
trying  still,  have  them  pass  him  with  an  icy  nod,  simply  be 
cause  he,  in  some  defense  of  truth  and  exploitation  of  the 
uplift,  had  fearlessly  trod  upon  their  precious  little  toes.  He 
did  not  like  to  have  his  telephone  ring  with  an  angry  protest, 
or  to  get  a  curt  letter  from  a  railroad  president  (  supposedly 
a  good  friend  of  the  paper's)  desiring  to  know  by  return 
mail  whether  the  clipping  therewith  inclosed  represented 
the  Post's  attitude  toward  the  railroads.  A  steady  proces 
sion  of  things  like  these  wears  on  the  nerves  of  a  sensitive 
man,  and  West,  for  all  his  confident  exterior,  was  a  sensitive 
man.  A  heavy  offset  in  the  form  of  large  and  constant  pub 
lic  eulogies  was  needed  to  balance  these  annoyances,  and 
such  an  offset  was  not  forthcoming. 


296  QUEED, 

West  was  older  now,  a  little  less  ready  in  his  enthusiasms, 
a  shade  less  pleased  with  the  world,  a  thought  less  sure  of  the 
eternal  merits  of  the  life  of  uplift.  In  fact  he  was  thirty-three 
years  old,  and  hejhad  moments,  now  and  then,  when  he  won 
dered  if  he  were  going  forward  as  rapidly  and  surely  as  he 
had  a  right  to  expect.  This  was  the  third  position  he  had 
had  since  he  left  college,  and  it  was  his  general  expectation 
to  graduate  into  a  fourth  before  a  great  while.  Semple  fre 
quently  urged  him  to  return  to  the  brokerage  business;  he 
had  made  an  unquestioned  success  there  at  any  rate.  As  to 
Blaines  College,  he  could  not  be  so  confident.  The  college 
had  opened  this  year  with  an  increased  enrollment  of  twenty- 
five  ;  and  though  West  privately  felt  certain  that  his  succes 
sor  was  only  reaping  where  he  himself  had  sown,  you  could 
not  be  certain  that  the  low  world  would  so  see  it.  As  for  the 
Post,  it  was  a  mere  stop-gap,  a  momentary  halting-place 
where  he  preened  for  a  far  higher  flight.  There  were  many 
times  that  winter  when  West  wondered  if  Plonny  Neal, 
whom  he  rarely  or  never  saw,  could  possibly  have  failed  to 
notice  how  prominently  he  was  in  line. 

But  these  doubts  and  dissatisfactions  left  little  mark 
upon  the  handsome  face  and  buoyant  manner.  Changes  in 
West,  if  there  were  any,  were  of  the  slightest.  Certainly 
his  best  friends,  like  those  two  charming  young  women, 
Miss  Weyland  and  Miss  Avery,  found  him  as  delightful 
as  ever. 

In  these  days,  West's  mother  desired  him  to  marry.  After 
the  cunning  habit  of  women,  she  put  the  thought  before 
him  daily,  under  many  an  alluring  guise,  by  a  thousand  en 
gaging  approaches.  West  himself  warmed  to  the  idea.  He 
had  drunk  freely  of  the  pleasures  of  single  blessedness, 
under  the  most  favorable  conditions;  was  now  becoming 
somewhat  jaded  with  them;  and  looked  with  approval  upon 
the  prospect  of  a  little  nest,  or  indeed  one  not  so  little,  duly 
equipped  with  the  usual  faithful  helpmeet  who  should  share 
his  sorrows,  joys,  etc.  The  nest  he  could  feather  decently 
enough  himself;  the  sole  problem,  a  critical  one  in  its  way, 


QUEED  297 

was  to  decide  upon  the  helpmeet.  West  was  neither  college 
boy  nor  sailor.  His  heart  was  no  harem  of  beautiful  faces. 
Long  since,  he  had  faced  the  knowledge  that  there  were  but 
two  girls  in  the  world  for  him.  Since,  however,  the  church 
and  the  law  allowed  him  but  one,  he  must  more  drastically 
monogamize  his  heart;  and  this  he  found  enormously  diffi 
cult.  It  was  the  poet's  triangle  with  the  two  dear  charmers 
over  again. 

One  blowy  night  in  late  February,  West  passed  by  the 
brown  stone  palace  which  Miss  Avery's  open-handed  papa, 
from  Mauch  Chunk,  occupied  on  a  three  years'  lease  with 
privilege  of  buying ;  and  repaired  to  the  more  modest  estab 
lishment  where  dwelt  Miss  Weyland  and  her  mother.  The 
reformatory  issue  was  then  at  the  touch.  The  bill  had  come 
out  of  committee  with  a  six-and-six  vote ;  rumor  had  it  that 
it  would  be  called  up  in  the  House  within  the  week;  and  it 
now  appeared  as  though  a  push  of  a  feather's  weight  might 
settle  its  fate  either  way.  Sharlee  and  West  spoke  first  of 
this.  She  was  eagerly  interested,  and  praised  him  warmly 
for  the  interest  and  valuable  help  of  the  Post.  Her  confi 
dence  was  unshaken  that  the  bill  would  go  through,  though 
by  a  narrow  margin. 

"The  opposition  is  of  the  deadliest  sort,"  she  admitted, 
"because  it  is  silent.  It  is  silent  because  it  knows  that  its 
only  argument  —  all  this  economy  talk  —  is  utterly  insin 
cere.  But  Mr.  Dayne  knows  where  the  opposition  is  — 
and  the  way  he  goes  after  it !  Never  believe  any  more  that 
ministers  can't  lobby!" 

"Probably  the  root  of  the  whole  matter,"  offered  West, 
easing  himself  back  into  his  chair,  "is  that  the  machine  fel 
lows  want  this  particular  hundred  thousand  dollars  in  their 
business." 

"  Is  n't  it  horrid  that  men  can  be  so  utterly  selfish?  You 
don't  think  they  will  really  venture  to  do  that?" 

"  I  honestly  don't  know.  You  see  I  have  turned  it  all  over 
to  Queed,  and  I  confess  I  have  n't  studied  it  with  anything 
like  the  care  he  has." 


298  QUEED 

Sharlee,  who  was  never  too  engrossed  in  mere  subjects  to 
notice  people's  tones,  said  at  once :  "  Oh,  I  am  sure  they  won't 
dare  do  it,"  and  immediately  changed  the  subject.  "You 
are  going  to  the  German,  of  course?" 

"Oh,  surely,  unless  the  office  pinches  me." 

"You  mustn't  let  it  pinch  you  —  the  last  of  the  year, 
heigho!  Did  you  hear  about  Robert  Byrd  and  Miss  - — no, 
I  won't  give  you  her  name  —  and  the  visiting  girl?" 

"Never  a  word." 

"She's  a  thoroughly  nice  girl,  but  —  well,  not  pretty,  I 
should  say,  and  I  don't  think  she  has  had  much  fun  here. 
Beverley  and  Robert  Byrd  were  here  the  other  night. 
Why  will  they  hunt  in  pairs,  do  you  know?  I  told  Beverley 
that  he  positively  must  take  this  girl  to  the  German.  He 
quarreled  and  complained  a  good  deal  at  first,  but  finally 
yielded  like  a  dear  boy.  Then  he  seemed  to  enter  in  the  nicest 
way  into  the  spirit  of  our  altruistic  design.  He  said  that 
after  he  had  asked  the  girl,  it  would  be  very  nice  if  Robert 
should  ask  her  too.  He  would  be  refused,  of  course,  but  the 
girl  would  have  the  pleasant  feeling  of  getting  a  rush,  and 
Robert  would  boost  his  standing  as  a  philanthropist,  all  with 
out  cost  to  anybody.  Robert  was  good-natured,  and  fell  in 
with  the  plan.  Three  days  later  he  telephoned  me,  simply 
furious.  He  had  asked  the  girl  —  you  know  he  has  n't  been  to 
a  German  for  five  years  —  and  she  accepted  at  once  with 
tears  of  gratitude." 

"But  how— ?" 

"Of  course  Beverley  never  asked  her.  He  simply  trapped 
Robert,  which  he  would  rather  do  than  anything  else  in  the 
world." 

West  shouted.  "Speaking  of  Germans,"  he  said  presently, 
"I  am  making  up  my  list  for  next  year —  the  early  bird, 
you  know.  How  many  will  you  give  me?" 

"Six." 

"Will  you  kindly  sign  up  the  papers  to-night?" 

"No  —  my  mother  won't  let  me.  I  might  sign  up  for 
one  if  you  want  me  to." 


QUEED  299 

"What  possible  use  has  your  mother  for  the  other  five 
that  is  better  than  giving  them  all  to  me?" 

"Perhaps  she  does  n't  want  to  spoil  other  men  for  me." 

West  leaned  forward,  interest  fully  awakened  on  his 
charming  face,  and  Sharlee  watched  him,  pleased  with  her 
self. 

It  had  occurred  to  her,  in  fact,  that  Mr.  West  was  tired ; 
and  this  was  the  solemn  truth.  He  was  a  man  of  large  re 
sponsibilities,  with  a  day's  work  behind  him  and  a  night's 
work  ahead  of  him.  His  personal  conception  of  the  way  tc 
occupy  the  precious  interval  did  not  include  the  conscien 
tious  talking  of  shop.  Jaded  and  brain-fagged,  what  he  de 
sired  was  to  be  amused,  beguiled,  soothed,  fascinated,  even 
flattered  a  bit,  mayhap.  Sharlee's  theory  of  hospitality  was 
that  a  guest  was  entitled  to  any  type  of  conversation  he  had 
a  mind  to.  Having  dismissed  her  own  troubles,  she  now 
proceeded  to  make  herself  as  agreeable  as  she  knew  how ;  and 
he  has  read  these  pages  to  little  purpose  who  does  not  know 
that  that  was  very  agreeable  indeed. 

West,  at  least,  appeared  to  think  so.  He  lingered,  charmed, 
until  quarter  past  eleven  o'clock,  at  which  hour  Mrs.  Wey- 
land,  in  the  room  above,  began  to  let  the  tongs  and  poker  fall 
about  with  unmistakable  significance ;  and  went  out  into  the 
starlit  night  radiant  with  the  certainty  that  his  heart,  after 
long  wandering,  had  found  its  true  mate  at  last. 


XXIV 

Sharlee1  s  Parlor  on  Another  Evening;  how  One  Caller  outsat 
Two,  and  why;  also,  how  Sharlee  looked  in  her  Mirror  for  a 
Long  Time,  and  why. 

ON  the  very  night  after  West  made  his  happy  discov 
ery,  namely  on  the  evening  of  February  24,  at  about 
twenty  minutes  of  nine,  Sharlee  Weyland's  doorbell 
rang,  and  Mr.  Queed  was  shown  into  her  parlor. 

His  advent  was  a  complete  surprise  to  Sharlee.  For 
these  nine  months,  her  suggestion  that  he  should  call  upon 
her  had  lain  utterly  neglected.  Since  the  Reunion  she  had 
seen  him  but  four  times,  twice  on  the  street,  and  once  at  each 
of  their  offices,  when  the  business  of  the  reformatory  had  hap 
pened  to  draw  them  together.  The  last  of  these  meetings, 
which  had  been  the  briefest,  was  already  six  weeks  old.  In 
all  of  her  acquaintance  with  him,  extending  now  over  two 
years  and  a  half,  this  was  the  first  time  that  he  had  ever 
sought  her  out  with  intentions  that  were,  presumably,  de 
liberately  social. 

The  event,  Sharlee  felt  in  greeting  him,  could  not  have 
happened,  more  unfortunately.  Queed  found  the  parlor  oc 
cupied,  and  the  lady's  attention  engaged,  by  two  young  men 
before  him.  One  of  them  was  Beverley  Byrd,  who  saluted 
him  somewhat  moodily.  The  other  was  a  Mr.  Miller  — 
no  relation  to  Miss  Miller  of  Mrs.  Paynter's,  though  a  faint 
something  in  his  ensemble  lent  plausibility  to  that  conjec 
ture  —  a  newcomer  to  the  city  who,  having  been  introduced 
to  Miss  Weyland  somewhere,  had  taken  the  liberty  of  call 
ing  without  invitation  or  permission.  It  was  impossible  for 
Sharlee  to  be  rude  to  anybody  under  her  own  roof,  but  it  is 
equally  impossible  to  describe  her  manner  to  Mr.  Miller  as 
exactly  cordial.  He  himself  was  a  cordial  man,  mustached 


QUEED  301 

and  anecdotal,  who  assumed  rather  more  confidence  than  he 
actually  felt.  Beverley  Byrd,  who  did  not  always  hunt  in 
pairs,  had  taken  an  unwonted  dislike  to  him  at  sight.  He  did 
not  consider  him  a  suitable  person  to  be  calling  on  Sharlee, 
and  he  had  been  doing  his  best,  with  considerable  deft 
ness  and  success,  to  deter  him  from  feeling  too  much  at 
home. 

Byrd  wore  a  beautiful  dinner  jacket.  So  did  Mr.  Miller, 
with  a  gray  tie,  and  a  gray,  brass-buttoned  vest,  to  boot. 
Queed  wore  his  day  clothes  of  blue,  which  were  not  so  new 
as  they  were  the  day  Sharlee  first  saw  them,  on  the  rustic 
bridge  near  the  little  cemetery.  He  had,  of  course,  taken  it 
for  granted  that  he  would  find  Miss  Weyland  alone.  Never 
theless,  he  did  not  appear  disconcerted  by  the  sudden  dis 
covery  of  his  mistake,  or  even  by  Mr.  Miller's  glorious 
waistcoat;  he  was  as  grave  as  ever,  but  showed  no  signs  of 
embarrassment.  Sharlee  caught  herself  observing  him  closely, 
as  he  shook  hands  with  the  two  men  and  selected  a  chair 
for  himself;  she  concluded  that  constant  contact  with  the 
graces  of  Charles  Gardiner  West  had  not  been  without  its 
effect  upon  him.  He  appeared  decidedly  more  at  his  ease 
than  Mr.  Miller,  for  instance,  and  he  had  another  valuable 
possession  which  that  personage  lacked,  namely,  the  face 
of  a  gentleman. 

But  it  was  too  evident  that  he  felt  little  sense  of  responsi 
bility  for  the  maintenance  of  the  conversation.  He  sat  back 
in  a  chair  of  exceptionable  comfortableness,  and  allowed 
Beverley  Byrd  to  discourse  with  him ;  a  privilege  which  Byrd 
exercised  fitfully,  for  his  heart  was  in  the  talk  that  Sharlee 
was  dutifully  supporting  with  Mr.  Miller.  Into  this  talk 
he  resolutely  declined  to  be  drawn,  but  his  ear  was  alert  for 
opportunities  —  which  came  not  infrequently  —  to  thrust 
in  a  polished  oar  to  the  discomfiture  of  the  intruder. 

Not  that  he  would  necessarily  care  to  do  it,  but  the  runner 
could  read  Mr.  Miller,  without  a  glass,  at  one  hundred  paces' 
distance.  He  was  of  the  climber  type,  a  self-made  man  in  the 
earlier  and  less  inspiring  stages  of  the  making.  Culture  had 


302  QUEED 

a  dangerous  fascination  for  him.  He  adored  to  talk  of  books; 
a  rash  worship,  it  seemed,  since  his  but  bowing  acquaintance 
with  them  trapped  him  frequently  into  mistaken  identities 
over  which  Sharlee  with  difficulty  kept  a  straight  face,  while 
Byrd  palpably  rejoiced. 

"You  know  Thanatopsis,  of  course,"  he  would  ask,  with 
a  rapt  and  glowing  eye  —  "Lord  Byron's  beautiful  poem  on 
the  philosophy  of  life?  Now  that  is  my  idea  of  what  poetry 
ought  to  be,  Miss  Weyland.  ..." 

And  Beverley  Byrd,  breaking  his  remark  to  Queed  off 
short  in  the  middle,  would  turn  to  Sharlee  with  a  face  of 
studious  calm  and  say:  — 

"Will  you  ever  forget,  Sharlee,  the  first  time  you  read  the 
other  Thanatopsis  —  the  one  by  William  Cullen  Bryant? 
Don't  you  remember  how  it  looked  —  with  the  picture  of 
Bryant  —  in  the  old  Fifth  Reader?" 

Mr.  Miller  proved  that  he  could  turn  brick-red,  but  he 
learned  nothing  from  experience. 

In  time,  the  talk  between  the  two  young  men,  which  had 
begun  so  desultorily,  warmed  up.  Byrd  had  read  something 
besides  the  Fifth  Reader,  and  Queed  had  discovered  before 
to-night  that  he  had  ideas  to  express.  Their  conversation 
progressed  with  waxing  interest,  from  the  President's  mes 
sage  to  the  causes  of  the  fall  of  Rome,  and  thence  by  wholly 
logical  transitions  to  the  French  Revolution  and  Woman's 
Suffrage.  Byrd  gradually  became  so  absorbed  that  he  al 
most,  but  not  quite,  neglected  to  keep  Mr.  Miller  in  his 
place.  As  for  Queed,  he  spoke  in  defense  of  the  "revolt  of 
woman"  for  five  minutes  without  interruption,  and  his  mas 
terly  sentences  finally  drew  the  silence  and  attention  of 
Mr.  Miller  himself. 

"Who  is  that  fellow?"  he  asked  in  an  undertone.  "I 
did  n't  catch  his  name." 

Sharlee  told  him. 

"He's  got  a  fine  face,"  observed  Mr.  Miller.  "I've  made 
quite  a  study  of  faces,  and  I  never  saw  one  just  like  his  — 
so  absolutely  on  one  note,  if  you  know  what  I  mean." 


QUEED  303 

"What  note  is  that?"  asked  Sharlee,  interested  by  him 
for  the  only  time  so  long  as  they  both  did  live. 

"Well,  it's  not  always  easy  to  put  a  name  to  it,  but  I'd 
call  it  ...  honesty.  —  If  you  know  what  I  mean." 

Mr.  Miller  stayed  until  half-past  ten.  The  door  had  hardly 
shut  upon  him  when  Byrd,  too,  rose. 

"  Oh,  don't  go,  Beverley ! "  protested  Sharlee./'  I  Ve  hardly 
spoken  to  you." 

"Duty  calls,"  said  Byrd.  " I 'm  going  to  walk  home  with 
Mr.  Miller." 

"Beverley  —  don't!  You  were  quite  horrid  enough  while 
he  was  here." 

"But  you  spoiled  it  all  by  being  so  unnecessarily  agree 
able!  It  is  my  business,  as  your  friend  and  well-wisher,  to  see 
that  he  does  n't  carry  away  too  jolly  a  memory  of  his  visit. 
Take  lunch  downtown  with  me  to-morrow,  won't  you,  Mr. 
Queed  —  at  the  Business  Men's  Club?  I  want  to  finish  our 
talk  about  the  Catholic  nations,  and  why  they're  decadent." 

Queed  said  that  he  would,  and  Byrd  hurried  away  to  over 
take  Mr.  Miller.  Or,  perhaps  that  gentleman  was  only  a 
pretext,  and  the  young  man's  experienced  eye  had  read  that 
any  attempt  to  outsit  the  learned  assistant  editor  was  fore 
doomed  to  failure. 

" I  'mso  glad  you  stayed, "said  Sharlee,  as  Queed  reseated 
himself.  "I  shouldn't  have  liked  not  to  exchange  a  word 
with  you  on  your  first  visit  here." 

"Oh!   This  is  not  my  first  visit,  you  may  remember." 

"Your  first  voluntary  visit,  perhaps  I  should  have  said." 

He  let  his  eyes  run  over  the  room,  and  she  could  see  that 
he  was  thinking,  half-unconsciously,  of  the  last  time  when 
he  and  she  had  sat  here. 

"I  had  no  idea  of  going,"  he  said  absently,  "till  I  had 
the  opportunity  of  speaking  to  you." 

A  brief  silence  followed,  which  clearly  did  not  embarrass 
him,  at  any  rate.  Sharlee,  feeling  the  necessity  of  breaking 
it,  still  puzzling  herself  with  speculations  as  to  what  had 
put  it  into  his  head  to  come,  said  at  random :  — 


304  QUEED 

"Oh,  do  tell  me  —  how  is  old  Pere  Goriot?" 

"Pere  Goriot?   I  never  heard  of  him. " 

"Oh,  forgive  me!  It  is  a  name  we  used  to  have,  long  ago, 
for  Professor  Nicolovius." 

A  shadow  crossed  his  brow.  "He  is  extremely  well,  I  be 
lieve." 

"You  are  still  glad  that  you  ran  off  with  him  to  live  tete- 
a-tete  in  a  bridal  cottage?" 

"Oh,  I  suppose  so.   Yes,  certainly!" 

His  frank  face  betrayed  that  the  topic  was  unwelcome  to 
him.  For  he  hated  all  secrets,  and  this  secret,  from  this 
girl,  was  particularly  obnoxious  to  him.  And  beyond  all 
that  part  of  it,  how  could  he  analyze  for  anybody  his  peri 
ods  of  strong  revolt  against  his  association  with  Henry  G. 
Surface,  followed  by  longer  and  stranger  periods  when, 
quite  apart  from  the  fact  that  his  word  was  given  and 
regrets  were  vain,  his  consciousness  embraced  it  as  having  a 
certain  positive  value  ? 

He  rose  restlessly,  and  in  rising  his  eye  fell  upon  the  little 
clock  on  the  mantel. 

"Good  heavens!"  broke  from  him.  "I  had  no  idea  it  was 
so  late!  I  must  go  directly.  Directly." 

"Oh,  no,  you  must  n't  think  of  it.  Your  visit  to  me  has 
just  begun  —  all  this  time  you  have  been  calling  on  Bever- 
ley  Byrd." 

"Why  do  you  think  I  came  here  to-night?"  he  asked 
abruptly. 

Sharlee,  from  her  large  chair,  smiled,  "/think  to  see  me." 

"Oh!  —  Yes,  naturally,  but  — " 

"Well,  I  think  this  is  the  call  plainly  due  me  from  my 
Reunion  party  last  year." 

"  No !  Not  at  all !  At  the  same  time,  it  has  been  since  that 
day  that  I  have  had  you  on  my  mind  so  much." 

He  said  this  in  a  perfectly  matter-of-fact  voice,  but  a  cer 
tain  nervousness  had  broken  through  into  his  manner.  He 
took  a  turn  up  and  down  the  room,  and  returned  suddenly 
to  his  seat. 


QUEED  305 

"Oh,  have  you  had  me  on  your  mind?" 

"Do  you  remember  my  saying  that  day,"  he  began,  res 
olutely,  "that  I  was  not  sure  whether  I  had  got  the  better 
of  you  or  you  had  got  the  better  of  me?" 

"I  remember  very  well." 

"Well,  I  have  come  to  tell  you  that — you  have  won." 

He  had  plucked  a  pencil  from  the  arsenal  of  them  in  his 
breast-pocket,  and  with  it  was  beating  a  noiseless  tattoo  on 
his  open  left  palm.  With  an  effort  he  met  her  eyes. 

'  *  I  say  you  were  right, ' '  came  from  him  nervously.  ' '  Don't 
you  hear?" 

"Was  I?  Won't  you  tell  me  just  what  you  mean?" 

"Don't  you  know?" 

"Really  I  don't  think  I  do.  You  see,  when  I  used  that 
expression  that  day,  I  was  speaking  only  of  the  editorship  — " 

"But  I  was  speaking  of  a  theory  of  life.  After  all,  the  two 
things  seem  to  have  been  bound  together  rather  closely  — 
just  as  you  said." 

He  restored  his  pencil  to  his  pocket,  palpably  pulled  him 
self  together,  and  proceeded : 

"Oh,  my  theory  was  wholly  rational  —  far  more  rational 
than  yours;  rationally  it  was  perfect.  It  was  a  wholly  log 
ical  recoil  from  the  idleness,  the  lack  of  purpose,  the  slipshod 
self-indulgence  under  many  names  that  I  saw,  and  see, 
everywhere  about  me.  I  have  work  to  do  —  serious  work 
of  large  importance  —  and  it  seemed  to  me  my  duty  to 
carry  it  through  at  all  hazards.  I  need  not  add  that  it  still 
seems  so.  Yet  it  was  a  life's  work,  already  well  along,  and 
there  was  no  need  for  me  to  pay  an  excessive  price  for  mere 
speed.  I  elected  to  let  everything  go  but  intellect;  I  felt  that 
I  must  do  so;  and  in  consequence,  by  the  simplest  sort  of 
natural  law,  all  the  rest  of  me  was  shriveling  up  —  had 
shriveled  up,  you  will  say.  Yet  I  knew  very  well  that  my 
intellect  was  not  the  biggest  part  of  me.  I  have  always 
understood  that.  .  .  .  Still,  it  seems  that  I  required  you  to 
rediscover  it  for  me  in  terms  of  everyday  life.  ..." 

"No,  no!"  she  interrupted,  "I  did  n't  do  that.   Most  of 


306  QUEED 

it  you  did  yourself.   The  start,  the  first  push  —  don't  you 
know? — it  came  from  Fifi." 

"Well,"  he  said  slowly,  "what  was  Fifi  but  you  again  in 
miniature?" 

"A  great  deal  else,"  said  Sharlee. 

Her  gaze  fell.  She  sunk  her  chin  upon  her  hand,  and 
a  silence  followed,  while  before  the  mind's  eye  of  each 
rose  a  vision  of  Fifi,  with  her  wasted  cheeks  and  great 
eyes. 

"As  I  say,  I  sacrificed  everything  to  reason,"  continued 
Queed,  obviously  struggling  against  embarrassment,  "and 
yet  pure  reason  was  never  my  ideal.  I  have  impressed  you 
as  a  thoroughly  selfish  person  —  you  have  told  me  that  — 
and  so  far  as  my  immediate  environment  is  concerned,  I 
have  been,  and  am.  So  it  may  surprise  you  to  be  told  that  a 
life  of  service  has  been  from  the  beginning  my  ambition  and 
my  star.  Of  course  I  have  always  interpreted  service  in  the 
broadest  sense,  in  terms  of  the  world ;  that  was  why  I  deliber 
ately  excluded  all  purely  personal  applications  of  it.  Yet  it 
is  from  a  proper  combination  of  reason  with  —  the  sociolo 
gist's  ' consciousness  of  kind' — fellow-feeling,  sympathy,  if 
you  prefer,  that  is  derived  a  life  of  fullest  efficiency.  I  have 
always  understood  the  truth  of  this  formula  as  applied  to 
peoples.  It  seems  that  I  —  rather  missed  its  force  as  to  in 
dividuals.  I  —  I  am  ready  to  admit  that  an  individual  life 
can  draw  an  added  meaning — and  richness  from  a  serv 
ice,  not  of  the  future,  but  of  the  present  —  not  of  the  race 
but  .  .  .  well,  of  the  unfortunate  on  the  doorstep.  Do  you 
understand,"  he  asked  abruptly,  "what  I  am  trying  to  tell 
you?" 

She  assured  him  that  she  understood  perfectly. 

A  slow  painful  color  came  into  his  face. 

"Then  you  appreciate  the  nature  and  the  size  of  the  debt 
I  owe  you." 

"Oh,  no,  no,  no!  If  I  have  done  anything  at  all  to  help 
you,"  said  Sharlee,  considerably  moved,  "then  I  am  very 
glad  and  proud.  But  as  for  what  you  speak  of  ...  no,  no, 


QUEED  307 

people  always  do  these  things  for  themselves.     The  help 
comes  from  within  — " 

"Oh,  don't  talk  like  that!"  broke  from  him.  "You  throw 
out  the  idea  somehow  that  I  consider  that  I  have  undergone 
some  remarkable  conversion  and  transformation.  I  have  n't 
done  anything  of  the  sort.  I  am  just  the  same  as  I  always 
was.  Just  the  same.  .  .  .  Only  now  I  am  willing  to  admit, 
as  a  scientific  truth,  that  time  given  to  things  not  in  them 
selves  directly  productive,  can  be  made  to  pay  a  good  divi 
dend.  If  what  I  said  led  you  to  think  that  I  meant  more  than 
that,  then  I  have,  for  once,  expressed  myself  badly.  I  tell 
you  this,"  he  went  on  hurriedly,  "simply  because  you  once 
interested  yourself  in  trying  to  convince  me  of  the  truth  of 
these  views.  Some  of  the  things  you  said  that  night  man 
aged  to  stick.  They  managed  to  stick.  Oh,  I  give  you  that. 
I  suppose  you  might  say  that  they  gradually  became  like 
mottoes  or  texts  —  not  scientific,  of  course  .  .  .  personal. 
Therefore,  I  thought  it  only  fair  to  tell  you  that  while  my 
cosmos  is  still  mostly  Ego  —  I  suppose  everybody's  is  in 
one  way  or  another  —  I  have — made  changes,  so  that  I  am 
no  longer  wholly  out  of  relation  with  life." 

"I  am  glad  you  wanted  to  tell  me,"  said  Sharlee,  "but 
I  have  known  it  for  —  oh,  the  longest  time." 

"In  a  certain  sense,"  he  hurried  on — "quite  a  different 
sense  —  I  should  say  that  your  talk  —  the  only  one  of  the 
kind  I  ever  had  —  did  for  me  the  sort  of  thing  .  .  . 
that  most  men's  mothers  do  for  them  when  they  are 
young." 

She  made  no  reply. 

"Perhaps,"  he  said,  almost  defiantly,  "you  don't  like  my 
saying  that?" 

"Oh,  yes!   I  like  it  very  much." 

"And  yet,"  he  said,  "I  don't  think  of  you  as  I  fancy  a 
man  would  think  of  his  mother,  or  even  of  his  sister.  It  is 
rather  extraordinary.  It  has  become  clear  to  me  that  you 
have  obtained  a  unique  place  in  my  thought  —  in  my  re 
gard.  Well,  good-night." 


308  QUEED 

She  looked  up  at  him,  without,  however,  quite  meeting 
his  eyes. 

"Oh!    Do  you  think  you  must  go?" 

"Well  —  yes.  I  have  said  everything  that  I  came  to  say. 
Did  you  want  me  to  stay  particularly?" 

"Not  if  you  feel  that  you  should  n't.  You've  been  very 
good  to  give  me  a  whole  evening,  as  it  is." 

"I'll  tell  you  one  more  thing  before  I  go." 

He  took  another  turn  up  and  down  the  room,  and  halted 
frowning  in  front  of  her. 

"I  am  thinking  of  making  an  experiment  in  practical  so 
cial  work  next  year.  What  would  be  your  opinion  of  a  free 
night-schooj  for  working  boys?" 

Sharlee,  greatly  surprised  by  the  question,  said  that  the 
field  was  a  splendid  one. 

He  went  on  at  once:  "Technical  training,  of  course, 
"would  be  the  nominal  basis  of  it.  I  could  throw  in,  also, 
boxing  and  physical  culture.  Buck  Klinker  would  be  de 
lighted  to  help  there.  By  the  way,  you  must  know  Klinker: 
he  has  some  first-rate  ideas  about  what  to  do  for  the  working 
population.  Needless  to  say,  both  the  technical  and  phys 
ical  training  would  be  only  baits  to  draw  attendance, 
though  both  could  be  made  very  valuable.  My  main  plan 
is  along  a  new  line.  I  want  to  teach  what  no  other  school 
attempts  —  only  one  thing,  but  that  to  be  hammered  in  so 
that  it  can  never  be  forgotten." 

"What  is  that?" 

"You  might  sum  it  all  up  as  the  doctrine  of  individual 
responsibility." 

She  echoed  his  term  inquiringly,  and  he  made  a  very  large 
gesture. 

"I  want  to  see  if  I  can  teach  boys  that  they  are  not  in 
dividuals  —  not  unrelated  atoms  in  a  random  universe. 
Teach  them  that  they  live  in  a  world  of  law  —  of  evolution 
by  law  —  that  they  are  links,  every  one  of  them,  in  a  splen 
did  chain  that  has  been  running  since  life  began,  and  will  run 
on  to  the  end  of  time.  Knock  into  their  heads  that  no  chain 


QUEED  309 

is  stronger  than  its  weakest  link,  and  that  this  means  them. 
Don't  you  see  what  a  powerful  socializing  force  there  is  in 
the  sense  of  personal  responsibility,  if  cultivated  in  the  right 
direction?  A  boy  may  be  willing  to  take  his  chances  on  go 
ing  to  the  bad  —  economically  and  socially,  as  well  as  mor 
ally  —  if  he  thinks  that  it  is  only  his  own  personal  concern. 
But  he  will  hesitate  when  you  once  impress  upon  him  that, 
in  doing  so,  he  is  blocking  the  whole  magnificent  procession. 
My  plan  would  be  to  develop  these  boys'  social  efficiency  by 
stamping  upon  them  the  knowledge  that  the  very  humblest 
of  them  holds  a  trusteeship  of  cosmic  importance." 

"I  understand.  .  .  .  How  splendid!  —  not  to  practice 
sociology  on  them,  but  to  teach  it  to  them  — " 

"But  could  we  get  the  boys?" 

She  felt  that  the  unconsciousness  with  which  he  took  her 
into  partnership  was  one  of  the  finest  compliments  that  had 
ever  been  paid  her. 

"Oh,  I  think  so!  The  Department  has  all  sorts  of  con 
nections,  as  well  as  lots  of  data  which  would  be  useful  in  that 
way.  How  Mr.  Dayne  will  welcome  you  as  an  ally!  And  I, 
too.  I  think  it  is  fine  of  you,  Mr.  Queed,  so  generous  and 
kind,  to  — " 

"Not  at  all!  Not  in  the  least!  I  beg  you,"  he  interrupted, 
irritably,  "not  to  go  on  misunderstanding  me.  I  propose  this 
simply  as  an  adjunct  to  my  own  work.  It  is  simply  in  the 
nature  of  a  laboratory  exercise.  In  five  years  the  experiment 
might  enable  me  to  check  up  some  of  my  own  conclusions, 
and  so  prove  very  valuable  to  me." 

"In  the  meantime  the  experiment  will  have  done  a  great 
deal  for  a  certain  number  of  poor  boys  —  unfortunates  on 
your  doorstep.  ..." 

"That,"  he  said  shortly,  "is  as  it  may  be.   But  — " 

"Mr.  Queed,"  said  Sharlee,  "why  are  you  honest  in  every 
way  but  one?  Why  won't  you  admit  that  you  have  thought 
of  this  school  because  you  would  like  to  do  something  to 
help  in  the  life  of  this  town?" 

"Because  I  am  not  doing  anything  of  the  sort!  Why  will 


3io  QUEED 

you  harp  on  that  one  string?  Good  heavens!  Aren't  you 
yourself  the  author  of  the  sentiment  that  a  sociologist 
ought  to  have  some  first-hand  knowledge  of  the  problems  of 
society?" 

Standing,  he  gazed  down  at  her,  frowning  insistently,  bent 
upon  staring  her  out  of  countenance;  and  she  looked  up  at 
him  with  a  Didymus  smile  which  slowly  grew.  Presently  his 
eyes  fell. 

"I  cannot  undertake,"  he  said,  in  his  stiffest  way,  "to 
analyze  all  my  motives  at  all  times  for  your  satisfaction. 
They  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  present  matter. 
The  sole  point  up  for  discussion  is  the  practical  question  of 
getting  such  a  school  started.  Keep  it  in  mind,  will  you? 
Give  some  thought  as  to  ways  and  means.  Your  experience 
with  the  Department  should  be  helpful  to  me  in  getting 
the  plan  launched." 

11  Certainly  I  will.  If  you  don't  object,  I  '11  talk  with  Mr. 
Dayne  about  it,  too.  He  — " 

"All  right.    I  don't  object.   Well,  good-night." 

Sharlee  rose  and  held  out  her  hand.  His  expression,  as  he 
took  and  shook  it,  suddenly  changed. 

"  I  suppose  you  think  I  have  acquired  the  habit,"  he 
said,  with  an  abrupt  recurrence  of  his  embarrassment,  "of 
coming  to  you  for  counsel  and  assistance?" 

"Well,  why  should  n't  you?"  she  answered  seriously.  "I 
have  had  the  opportunity  and  the  time  to  learn  some 
things—" 

"You  can't  dismiss  your  kindness  so  easily  as  that." 

"Oh,  I  don't  think  I  have  been  particularly  kind." 

"Yes,  you  have.    I  admit  that.    You  have." 

He  took  the  conversation  with  such  painful  seriousness 
that  she  was  glad  to  lighten  it  with  a  smile. 

"  If  you  persist  in  thinking  so,  you  might  feel  like  reward 
ing  me  by  coming  to  see  me  soon  again." 

"Yes,  yes!  I  shall  come  to  see  you  soon  again.  Certainly. 
Of  course,"  he  added  hastily,  "it  is  desirable  that  I  should 
talk  with  you  more  at  length  about  my  school." 


QUEED  311 

He  was  staring  at  her  with  a  conflict  of  expressions  in 
which,  curiously  enough,  pained  bewilderment  seemed  upper 
most.  Sharlee  laughed,  not  quite  at  her  ease. 

"Do  you  know,  I  am  still  hoping  that  some  day  you  will 
come  to  see  me,  not  to  talk  about  anything  definite  —  just 
to  talk." 

"As  to  that,"  he  replied,  "I  cannot  say.    Good-night." 

Forgetting  that  he  had  already  shaken  hands,  he  now  went 
through  with  it  again.  This  time  the  ceremony  had  unex 
pected  results.  For  now  at  the  first  touch  of  her  hand,  a  sen 
sation  closely  resembling  chain-lightning  sprang  up  his  arm, 
and  tingled  violently  down  through  all  his  person.  It  was  as 
if  his  arm  had  not  merely  fallen  suddenly  asleep,  but  was 
singing  uproariously  in  its  slumbers. 

"I'm  so  glad  you  came,"  said  Sharlee. 

He  retired  in  a  confusion  which  he  was  too  untrained  to 
hide.  At  the  door  he  wheeled  abruptly,  and  cleared  him 
self,  with  a  white  face,  of  evasions  that  were  torturing  his 
conscience. 

"I  will  not  say  that  a  probable  benefit  to  the  boys  never 
entered  into  my  thoughts  about  the  school.  Nor  do  I  say 
that  my  next  visit  will  be  wholly  to  talk  about  definite  things, 
as  you  put  it.  For  part  of  the  time,  I  daresay  I  should  like 
—  just  to  talk." 

Sharlee  went  upstairs,  and  stood  for  a  long  time  gazing 
at  herself  in  the  mirror.  Vainly  she  tried  to  glean  from  it 
the  answer  to  a  most  interesting  conundrum:  Did  Mr.  Queed 
still  think  her  very  beautiful? 


XXV 

Recording  a  Discussion  about  the  Reformatory  between  Editor 
West  and  his  Dog-like  Admirer,  the  City  Boss;  and  a  Briefer 
Conversation  between  West  and  Prof.  Nicolovius's  Boarder. 

A 'OUT  one  o'clock  the  telephone  rang  sharply,  and 
Queed,  just  arrived  for  the  afternoon  work  and  alone 
in  the  office,  answered  it.  It  was  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Dayne,  Secretary  of  the  Department  of  Charities;  he  had 
learned  that  the  reformatory  bill  was  to  be  called  up  in  the 
house  next  day.  The  double-faced  politicians  of  the  ma 
chine,  said  Mr.  Dayne,  with  their  pretended  zeal  for  econ 
omy,  were  desperately  afraid  of  the  Post.  Would  Mr. 
Queed  be  kind  enough  to  hit  a  final  ringing  blow  for  the  right 
in  to-morrow's  paper? 

"That  our  position  to-day  is  as  strong  as  it  is,"  said  the 
kind,  firm  voice,  "is  due  largely  to  your  splendid  work,  Mr. 
Queed.  I  say  this  gladly,  and  advisedly.  If  you  will  put  your 
shoulder  to  the  wheel  just  once  more,  I  am  confident  that 
you  will  push  us  through.  I  shall  be  eternally  grateful,  and  so 
will  the  State.  For  it  is  a  question  of  genuine  moral  import 
ance  to  us  all." 

Mr.  Dayne  received  assurance  that  Mr.  Queed  would  do 
all  that  he  could  for  him.  He  left  the  telephone  rather 
wishing  that  the  assistant  editor  could  sometimes  be  inspired 
into  verbal  enthusiasm.  But  of  his  abilities  the  Secretary 
did  not  entertain  the  smallest  doubt,  and  he  felt  that  day 
that  his  long  fight  for  the  reformatory  was  as  good  as  won. 

Hanging  up  the  receiver,  Queed  leaned  back  in  his  swivel 
chair  and  thoughtfully  filled  a  pipe,  which  he  smoked  now 
adays  with  an  experienced  and  ripened  pleasure.  At  once  he 
relapsed  into  absorbed  thought.  Though  he  answered  Mr. 
Dayne  calmly  and  briefly  according  to  his  wont,  the  young 


QUEED  313 

man's  heart  was  beating  faster  with  the  knowledge  that  he 
stood  at  the  crisis  of  his  longest  and  dearest  editorial  fight. 
He  expected  to  win  it.  The  whole  subject,  from  every  con 
ceivable  point  of  view,  was  at  his  fingers'  ends.  He  knew 
exactly  what  to  say ;  his  one  problem  was  how  to  say  it  in  the 
most  irresistible  way  possible. 

Yet  Queed,  tilted  back  in  his  chair,  and  staring  out  over 
the  wet  roofs,  was  not  thinking  of  the  reformatory.  He  was 
thinking,  not  of  public  matters  at  all,  but  of  the  circum 
stances  of  his  curious  life  with  Henry  G.  Surface;  and  his 
thoughts  were  not  agreeable  in  the  least. 

Not  that  he  and  the  "old  professor"  did  not  get  along 
well  together.  It  was  really  surprising  how  well  they  did  get 
along.  Their  dynamic  interview  of  last  June  had  at  once 
been  buried  out  of  sight,  and  since  then  their  days  had 
flowed  along  with  unbroken  smoothness.  If  there  had  been 
times  when  the  young  man's  thought  recoiled  from  the  com 
pact  and  the  intimacy,  his  manner  never  betrayed  any  sign 
of  it.  On  the  contrary,  he  found  himself  mysteriously  an 
swering  the  growing  dependence  of  the  old  man  with  a 
growing  sense  of  responsibility  toward  him,  and  discovering 
in  the  process  a  curious  and  subtle  kind  of  compensation. 

What  troubled  Queed  about  Nicolovius  —  as  the  world 
called  him  —  was  his  money.  He,  Queed,  was  in  part  living 
on  this  money,  eating  it,  drinking  it,  sleeping  on  it.  Of  late 
the  old  man  had  been  spending  it  with  increasing  freedom, 
constantly  enlarging  the  comforts  of  the  joint  menage.  He 
had  reached,  in  fact,  a  scale  of  living  which  constantly  thrust 
itself  on  Queed 's  consciousness  as  quite  beyond  the  savings 
of  a  poor  old  school  teacher.  And  if  this  appearance  were 
true,  where  did  the  surplus  come  from? 

The  question  had  knocked  unpleasantly  at  the  young 
man's  mind  before  now.  This  morning  he  faced  it,  and 
pondered  deeply.  A  way  occurred  to  him  by  which,  pos 
sibly,  he  might  turn  a  little  light  upon  this  problem.  He  did 
not  care  to  take  it;  he  shrank  from  doing  anything  that 
might  seem  like  spying  upon  the  man  whose  bread  he  broke 


3H  QUEED 

thrice  daily.  Yet  it  seemed  to  him  that  a  point  had  now 
been  reached  where  he  owed  his  first  duty  to  himself. 

"Come  in,"  he  said,  looking  around  in  response^  to  a  brisk 
knock  upon  his  shut  door;  and  there  entered  Plonny  Neal, 
whom  Queed,  through  the  Mercury,  knew  very  well  now. 

"Hi  there,  Doc!   Playin'  you  was  Horace  Greeley?" 

Mr.  Neal  opened  the  connecting  door  into  West's  office, 
glanced  through,  found  it  empty,  and  shut  the  door  again. 
Whether  he  was  pleased  or  the  reverse  over  this  discovery, 
his  immobile  countenance  gave  no  hint;  but  the  fact  was 
that  he  had  called  particularly  to  see  West  on  a  matter  of 
urgent  private  business. 

"I  was  on  the  floor  and  thought  I  'd  say  howdy,"  he  re 
marked  pleasantly.  "Say,  Doc,  I  been  readin'  them  reform 
atory  drools  of  yours.  Me  and  all  the  boys." 

"I  'm  glad  to  hear  it.   They  are  certain  to  do  you  good." 

Queed  smiled.  He  had  a  genuine  liking  for  Mr.  Neal,  which 
was  not  affected  by  the  fact  that  their  views  differed  dia 
metrically  on  almost  every  subject  under  the  sun. 

Mr.  Neal  smiled,  too,  more  enigmatically,  and  made  a 
large  gesture  with  his  unlighted  cigar. 

"  I  ain't  had  such  good  laughs  since  Tommy  Walker,  him 
that  was  going  to  chase  me  out  of  the  city  f 'r  the  tall  timber, 
up  and  died.  But  all  the  same,  I  hate  to  see  a  likely  young 
feller  sittin'  up  nights  tryin'  to  make  a  laughin'  stock  of  him 
self." 

"The  last  laughs  are  always  the  best,  Mr.  Neal.  Did  you 
ever  try  any  of  them?  " 

"You're  beat  to  a  pappyer  mash,  and  whistlin'  to  keep 
your  courage." 

"Listen  to  my  whistle  day  after  to-morrow  — " 

But  the  door  had  shut  on  Mr.  Neal,  who  had  doubtless 
read  somewhere  that  the  proper  moment  to  terminate  a  call 
is  on  some  telling  speech  of  one's  own. 

"I  wonder  what  he's  up  to,"  mused  Queed. 

He  brought  his  chair  to  horizontal  and  addressed  himself 
to  his  reformatory  article.  He  sharpened  his  pencil;  tangled 


QUEED  315 

his  great  hand  into  his  hair;  and  presently  put  down  an 
opening  sentence  that  fully  satisfied  him,  his  own  sternest 
critic.  Then  a  memory  of  his  visitor  returned  to  his  mind, 
and  he  thought  pleasurably: 

"Plonny  knows  he  is  beaten.  That's  what's  the  matter 
with  him." 

Close  observers  had  often  noted,  however,  that  that  was 
very  seldom  the  matter  with  Plonny,  and  bets  as  to  his 
being  beaten  were  always  to  be  placed  with  diffidence  and 
at  very  long  odds.  Plonny  had  no  idea  whatever  of  being 
beaten  on  the  reformatory  measure :  on  the  contrary,  it  was 
the  reformatory  measure  which  was  to  be  beaten.  Possibly 
Mr.  Neal  was  a  white-souled  patriot  chafing  under  threat 
ened  extravagance  in  an  economy  year.  Possibly  he  was 
impelled  by  more  machine-like  exigencies,  such  as  the  need 
of  just  that  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  create  a  few  nice 
new  berths  for  the  "organization."  The  man's  motives  are 
an  immaterial  detail.  The  sole  point  worth  remembering  is 
that  Plonny  Neal  had  got  it  firmly  in  his  head  that  there 
should  be  no  reformatory  legislation  that  year. 

It  was  Mr.  Neal's  business  to  know  men,  and  he  was  es 
teemed  a  fine  business  man.  Leaving  the  assistant  editor, 
he  sallied  forth  to  find  the  editor.  It  might  have  taken  Queed 
an  hour  to  put  his  hand  on  West  just  then.  Plonny  did  it  in 
less  than  six  minutes. 

West  was  at  Semple's  (formerly  Semple  &  West's),  where 
he  looked  in  once  a  day  just  to  see  what  the  market  was 
doing.  This  was  necessary,  as  he  sometimes  explained,  in 
order  that  the  Post's  financial  articles  might  have  that  au- 
thoritativeness  which  the  paper's  position  demanded.  West 
enjoyed  the  good  man-talk  at  Semple's;  the  atmosphere  of 
frank,  cheery  commercialism  made  a  pleasant  relief  from  the 
rarer  altitudes  of  the  uplift.  He  stood  chatting  gayly  with  a 
group  of  habitues,  including  some  of  the  best  known  men  of 
the  town.  All  greeted  Plonny  pleasantly,  West  cordially. 
None  of  our  foreign  critics  can  write  that  the  American  man 
is  a  moral  prude.  On  two  occasions,  Plonny  had  been  vin- 


316  QUEED 

dicated  before  the  grand  jury  by  the  narrow  margin  of  one 
vote.  Yet  he  was  much  liked  as  a  human  sinner  who  had  no 
pretenses  about  him,  and  who  told  a  good  story  surpassingly 
well. 

Ten  minutes  later  Mr.  Neal  and  Mr.  West  met  in  a  pri 
vate  room  at  Berringer's,  having  arrived  thither  by  different 
routes.  Over  a  table,  the  door  shut  against  all-comers,  Mr. 
Neal  went  at  once  to  the  point,  apologizing  diffidently  for  a 
" butting  in"  which  Mr.  West  might  resent,  but  which  he, 
Mr.  West's  friend,  could  no  longer  be  restrained  from.  The 
Post,  he  continued,  had  been  going  along  splendidly  — 
"  better  'n  under  Cowles  even  —  everybody  says  so  — " 
and  then,  to  the  sorrow  and  disappointment  of  the  new  ed 
itor's  admirers,  up  had  come  this  dashed  old  reformatory 
business  and  spoiled  everything. 

West,  whose  thoughts  had  unconsciously  run  back  to  his 
last  private  talk  with  Plonny  —  the  talk  about  getting  in 
line  —  good-naturedly  asked  his  friend  if  he  was  really  lined 
up  with  the  wire-pulling  moss-backs  who  were  fighting  the 
reformatory  bill. 

"You  just  watch  me  and  see,"  said  Plonny,  with  humorous 
reproachfulness.  "No  charge  f'r  lookin',  and  rain  checks 
given  in  case  of  wet  grounds." 

"Then  for  once  in  your  life,  anyhow,  you've  called  the 
turn  wrong,  Plonny.  This  institution  is  absolutely  necessary 
for  the  moral  and  social  upbuilding  of  the  State.  It  would 
be  necessary  if  it  cost  five  times  one  hundred  thousand  dol 
lars,  and  it's  as  sure  to  come  as  judgment  day." 

"Ain't  it  funny!"  mused  Plonny.  "Take  a  man  like  you, 
with  fine  high  ideas  and  all,  and  let  anything  come  up  and 
pass  itself  off  f'r  a  maw'l  question  and  he'll  go  off  half-cocked 
ten  times  out  of  ten." 

"Half-cocked!"  laughed  West.  "We've  been  studying 
this  question  three  years." 

"Yes,  and  began  your  studies  with  your  minds  all  made 
up." 

Plonny  fastened  upon  the  young  man  a  gaze  in  which 


QUEED  317 

superior  wisdom  struggled  unsuccessfully  with  overwhelming 
affection.  "You  know  what  it  is,  Mr.  West?  You've  been 
took  in,  you've  bit  on  a  con  game  like  a  hungry  pike. 
Excuse  my  speaking  so  plain,  but  I  told  you  a  long  time  ago 
I  was  mightily  interested  in  you." 

"Speak  as  plain  as  you  like,  Plonny.  In  fact,  my  only  re 
quest  at  the  moment  is  that  you  will  speak  plainer  still. 
Who  is  it  that  has  taken  me  in,  and  who  is  working  this  little 
con  game  you  mention?" 

"Rev.  George  Dayne  of  the  Charities,"  said  Plonny  at 
once.  "You  mentioned  wire-pulling  just  now.  Lemme  tell 
you  that  in  the  Rev.  George  you  got  the  champeen  wire 
puller  of  the  lot,  the  king  politician  of  them  all  —  the  only 
one  in  this  town,  I  do  believe,  could  have  thrown  a  bag  as 
neat  over  your  head,  Mr.  West." 

"Why,  Plonny!  Much  learning  has  made  you  mad!  I 
know  Dayne  like  a  book,  and  he  's  as  straightforward  a  fel 
low  as  ever  lived." 

Mr.  Neal  let  his  eyes  fall  to  the  table-top  and  indulged  in 
a  slow  smile,  which  he  appeared  to  be  struggling  courteously, 
but  without  hope,  to  suppress. 

"O'  course  you  got  a  right  to  your  opinion,  Mr.  West." 

A  brief  silence  ensued,  during  which  a  tiny  imp  of  mem 
ory  whispered  into  West's  ear  that  Miss  Weyland  herself 
had  commented  on  the  Rev.  Mr.  Dayne's  marvelous  gifts 
as  a  lobbyist. 

"  I  'm  a  older  man  than  you,"  resumed  Neal,  with  precari 
ous  smilelessness,  "and  mebbe  I've  seen  more  of  practi 
cal  poltix.  It  would  be  a  strange  thing,  you  might  say,  if  at 
my  time  of  life,  I  did  n't  know  a  politician  when  I  passed 
him  in  the  road.  Still,  don't  you  take  my  word  for  it.  I  'm 
only  repeating  what  others  say  when  I  tell  you  that  Parson 
Dayne  wants  to  be  Governor  of  this  State  some  day.  That 
surprises  you  a  little,  hey?  You  was  kind  of  thinking  that 
'Rev.'  changed  the  nature  of  a  man,  and  that  ambition 
never  thought  of  keeping  open  f'r  business  under  a  high- 
cut  vest,  now  was  n't  you?  Well,  I  've  seen  funny  things  in 


3i8  QUEED 

my  time.  I'd  say  that  the  parson  wants  this  reformatory 
some  f'r  the  good  of  the  State,  and  mostly  f r  the  good  of 
Mr.  Dayne.  Give  it  to  him,  with  the  power  of  appointing 
employees  —  add  this  to  what  he 's  already  got  —  and  in 
a  year  he'll  have  the  prettiest  little  private  machine  ever 
you  did  see.  I  don't  ask  you  to  believe  me.  All  I  ask  is  f'r 
you  to  stick  a  pin  in  what  I  say,  and  see  'f  it  don't  come  true. ' ' 

West  mused,  impressed  against  his  will.  "You're  wrong, 
Plonny,  in  my  opinion,  and  if  you  were  ten  times  right,  what 
of  it?  You  seem  to  think  that  the  Post  is  advocating  this 
reformatory  because  Dayne  has  asked  for  it.  The  Post  is 
doing  nothing  of  the  sort.  It  is  advocating  the  reformatory 
because  it  has  studied  this  question  to  the  bottom  for  itself, 
because  it  knows  — " 

" Right!  Good  f'r  you!"  exclaimed  Mr.  Neal,  much 
gratified.  " That's  just  what  I  tell  the  boys  when  they  say 
you're  playin'  poltix  with  the  little  dominie.  And  that," 
said  he,  briskly,  "is  just  why  I'm  for  the  reformatory,  in 
spite  of  Rev.  Dayne's  little  games." 

"You  're  for  it!  You  said  just  now  that  you  were  opposed 
to  it." 

"Not  to  the  reformatory,  Mr.  West.  Not  at  all.  I'm 
only  opposed  to  spending  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  for  it 
in  a  poverty  year." 

"Oh!  You  want  the  reformatory,  but  you  don't  want  it 
now.  That's  where  you  stand,  is  it?" 

"Yes,  and  everybody  else  that  understands  just  what  the 
situation  is.  I  believe  in  this  reformatory  —  the  Post  con 
verted  me,  that 's  a  fact  —  and  if  you  '11  only  let  her  stand 
two  years,  take  my  word  for  it,  she'll  go  through  with  a 
whoop.  But  if  you're  going  to  hurry  the  thing  — " 

"What's  your  idea  of  hurry  exactly?  The  war  has  been 
over  forty  years  — " 

"And  look  how  splendid  we've  got  along  these  forty  years 
without  the  reformatory!  Will  you  care  to  say,  Mr.  West, 
that  we  could  n't  make  it  forty-two  without  bringing  great 
danger  to  the  State?" 


QUEED  319 

"No,  certainly  not.    But  the  point  is  — " 

"The  point  is  that  if  we  spend  all  this  money  now,  the 
people  will  kick  the  party  out  at  the  next  election.  I  would 
n't  admit  this  to  many,  'cause  I  'm  ashamed  of  it,  but  it 's 
gospel  truth.  Mr.  West,"  said  Plonny,  earnestly,  "I  know 
you  want  the  Post  to  stand  for  the  welfare  of  the  party  — " 

"Certainly.  And  it  has  been  my  idea  that  evidence  of 
sane  interest  in  public  morals  was  a  pretty  good  card 
for  —  " 

"So  it  would  be  at  any  ordinary  time.  But  it's  mighty 
different  when  the  people  from  one  end  of  the  State  to  the 
other  are  howling  economy  and  saying  that  all  expenses 
must  go  to  bed-rock  or  they  '11  know  the  reason  why.  There 's 
the  practical  side  of  it  —  look  at  it  f'r  a  minute.  The  legis 
lature  was  elected  by  these  people  on  a  platform  promising 
strictest  economy.  They  're  tryin'  to  carry  out  their  promise 
faithfully.  They  turn  down  and  postpone  some  mighty  good 
plans  to  advance  the  progress  of  the  State.  They  rejuice 
salaries  in  various  departments"  —  (one  was  the  exact 
number)  —  "heelers  come  up  lookin'  f'r  jobs,  and  they  send 
'em  away  empty-handed  and  sore.  Old-established  institu 
tions,  that  have  been  doin'  grand  work  upbuildin'  the  State 
f'r  years,  are  told  that  they  must  do  with  a  half  or  three 
quarters  of  their  appropriations  f'r  the  next  two  years. 
You've  seen  all  this  happen,  Mr.  West?" 

West  admitted  that  he  had. 

"Well,  now  when  everything  is  goin'  smooth  and  promisin', 
you  come  along  and  tell  'em  they  got  to  shell  out  a  hundred 
thousand  dollars  right  away  f'r  a  brand-new  institution,  with 
an  annual  appropriation  to  keep  it  up.  Now  s'pose  they  do 
what  you  tell  'em.  What  happens?  You  think  there's  no 
poltix  at  all  in  this  reformatory  business,  but  I  can  tell  you 
the  Republicans  won't  take  such  a  view  as  that.  They'll 
say  that  the  party  spent  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  of  the 
people's  money  in  a  hard  times  year,  just  to  make  a  few  more 
jobs  f'r  favorites.  They'll  throw  that  up  at  us  from  every 
stump  in  the  State.  And  when  our  leaders  explain  that  it  was 


320  QUEED 

done  for  the  maw'l  good  of  the  State,  they  '11  give  us  the  laugh 
—  same  as  they  did  when  we  established  the  Foundling 
Hospital  in  '98.  Now  I  tell  you  the  party  can't  stand  any 
talk  of  that  kind  this  year.  We  're  on  shaky  ground  right  now 
f 'r  the  same  reason  that  we  're  all  so  proud  of  —  spendin' 
money  f'r  the  maw'l  uplift  of  the  State.  We  either  got  to 
slow  up  f'r  awhile  or  take  a  licking.  That  's  what  all  the 
talk  comes  down  to  —  one  simple  question:  Will  we  hold 
off  this  big  expense  f'r  just  two  years,  or  will  we  send  the 
old  party  down  to  defeat?" 

West  laughed,  not  quite  comfortably. 

In  all  this  dialogue,  Mr.  Neal  had  over  him  the  enormous 
advantage  of  exact  and  superior  knowledge.  To  tell  the 
truth,  West  knew  very  little  about  the  reformatory  situation, 
and  considered  it,  among  the  dozens  of  matters  in  which  he 
was  interested,  rather  a  small  issue.  Having  turned  the  cam 
paign  over  to  his  assistant,  he  had  dismissed  it  from  his  mind ; 
and  beyond  his  general  conviction  that  the  reformatory 
would  be  a  good  thing  for  the  State,  he  had  only  the  sketchi 
est  acquaintance  with  the  arguments  that  were  being  used 
pro  and  con.  Therefore  Plonny  Neal's  passionate  earnest 
ness  surprised  him,  and  Plonny 's  reasoning,  which  he  knew 
to  be  the  reasoning  of  the  thoroughly  informed  State  lead 
ers,  impressed  him  very  decidedly.  Of  the  boss's  sincerity 
he  never  entertained  a  doubt ;  to  question  that  candid  eye 
was  impossible.  That  Plonny  had  long  been  watching  him 
with  interest  and  admiration,  West  knew  very  well.  It  began 
to  look  to  him  very  much  as  though  Queed,  through  excess 
of  sociological  zeal,  had  allowed  himself  to  be  misled,  and 
that  the  paper's  advanced  position  was  founded  on  theory 
without  reference  to  existing  practical  conditions. 

West  keenly  felt  the  responsibility  of  his  post.  To  safe 
guard  and  promote  the  welfare  of  the  Democratic  party  had 
long  been  a  cardinal  principle  of  the  paper  whose  utterances 
he  now  controlled.  Still,  it  must  be  true  that  Neal  was  paint 
ing  the  situation  in  colors  altogether  too  black. 

"You're  a  pretty  good  stump  performer  yourself,  Plonny. 


QUEED  321 

Don't  you  know  that  exactly  the  same  argument  will  be 
urged  two  years  from  now?" 

"  I  know  it  won't,"  said  Plonny  with  the  calmness  of  abso 
lute  conviction.  "A  fat  legislature  always  follows  a  lean  one. 
They,  come  in  strips,  same  as  a  shoulder  of  bacon." 

"Well !  I  would  n't  think  much  of  a  party  whose  legs  were 
so  weak  that  a  little  step  forward  —  everybody  knows  it 's 
forward  —  would  tumble  it  over  in  a  heap." 

"The  party!  I  ain't  thinking  of  the  party,  Mr.  West.  I  'm 
thinking,"  said  Neal,  the  indignation  in  his  voice  giving  way 
to  a  sudden  apologetic  softness,  "of  you." 

"Me?  What  on  earth  have  I  got  to  do  with  it?"  asked 
West,  rather  touched  by  the  look  of  dog-like  affection  in  the 
other's  eyes. 

"Everything.  If  the  party  gets  let  in  for  this  extrava 
gance,  you'll  be  the  man  who  did  it." 

There  was  a  silence,  and  then  West  said,  rather  nobly: 

"Well,  I  suppose  I  will  have  to  stand  that.  I  must  do 
what  I  think  is  right,  you  know,  and  take  the  consequences." 

"Two  years  from  now,"  said  Mr.  Neal,  gently,  "there 
wouldn't  be  no  consequences." 

"Possibly  not,"  said  West,  in  a  firm  voice. 

"While  the  consequences  now,"  continued  Mr.  Neal,  still 
more  gently,  "would  be  to  put  you  in  very  bad  with  the 
party  leaders.  Fine  men  they  are,  but  they  never  forgive  a 
man  who  puts  a  crimp  into  the  party.  You  'd  be  a  marked 
man  to  the  longest  day  you  lived!" 

"Well,  Plonny!  I'm  not  asking  anything  of  the  party 
leaders—" 

"But  suppose  some  of  your  friends  wanted  to  ask  some 
thing/or  you?" 

Suddenly  Plonny  leaned  over  the  table,  and  began  speak 
ing  rapidly  and  earnestly. 

"Listen  here,  Mr.  West.  I  understand  your  feelings  and 
your  position  just  like  they  was  print,  and  I  was  reading  them 
over  your  shoulder.  You're  walking  with  y'r  eyes  on  the 
skies,  and  you  don't  like  to  look  at  the  ground  to  see  that 


322  QUEED 

you  don't  break  nothing  as  you  go  forward.  Your  mind's  full 
of  the  maw'l  idea  and  desire  to  uplift  the  people,  and  it 's  kind 
of  painful  to  you  to  stop  and  look  at  the  plain  practical  way 
by  which  things  get  done.  But  I  tell  you  that  everybody 
who  ever  got  anything  big  done  in  this  world,  got  it  done  in  a 
practical  way.  All  the  big  men  that  you  and  I  admire — all 
the  public  leaders  and  governors  and  reform  mayors  and  so 
on  — got  where  they  have  by  doing  practical  good  in  a  prac 
tical  way.  Now,  you  don't  like  me  to  say  that  if  you  do  so- 
and-so,  you  '11  be  in  bad  with  the  State  leaders,  f 'r  that  looks 
to  you  as  if  I  thought  you  could  be  infloonced  by  what  would 
be  your  personal  advantage.  And  I  honor  you  f'r  them  feel- 
in's  which  is  just  what  I  knew  you'd  had,  or  I  would  n't 
be  here  talkin'  to  you  now.  But  you  mustn't  blame  others 
if  they  ain't  as  partic'lar,  mebbe,  as  to  how  things  might  look. 
You  must  n't  blame  y'r  friends  —  and  you  Ve  got  a  sight 
more  of  them  than  you  have  any  idea  of  —  if  they  feel  all 
broke  up  to  see  you  get  in  bad,  both  for  your  own  sake  and 
f'r  the  sake  of  the  party." 

Plonny's  voice  trembled  with  earnestness;  West  had  had 
no  idea  that  the  man  admired  him  so  much. 

"You  want  to  serve  the  people,  Mr.  West?  How  could 
you  do  it  better  than  in  public  orf'ce.  Lemme  talk  to 
you  straight  f'r  once  —  will  you?  Or  am  I  only  offendin' 
you  by  buttin'  in  this  way,  without  having  ever  been 
asked?" 

West  gave  his  admirer  the  needed  assurance. 

"  I  'm  glad  of  it,  f'r  I  can  hardly  keep  it  in  my  system  any 
longer.  Listen  here,  Mr.  West.  As  you  may  have  heard, 
there 's  to  be  a  primary  f'r  city  orf 'cers  in  June.  Secret  bal 
lot  or  no  secret  ballot,  the  organization 's  going  to  win.  You 
know  that.  Now,  who  '11  the  organization  put  up  f'r  Mayor? 
From  what  I  hear,  they  dassen't  put  up  any  old  machine 
hack,  same's  they  been  doin'  f'r  years.  They  might  want  to 
do  it,  but  they  're  a-scared  the  people  won't  stand  f'r  it.  From 
what  little  I  hear,  the  feelin's  strong  that  they  got  to  put  up 
some  young  progressive  public-spirited  man  of  the  reformer 


QUEED  323 

type.  Now  s'posin'  the  friends  of  a  certain  fine  young  man, 
sittin'  not  a  hundred  miles  from  this  table,  had  it  in  their 
minds  to  bring  him  forward  f 'r  the  nomination.  This  young 
man  might  say  he  was  n't  seekin'  the  orf'ce  and  did  n't 
want  it,  but  /  say  public  orf'ce  is  a  duty,  and  no  man  that 
wants  to  serve  the  people  can  refuse  it,  partic'larly  when  he 
may  be  needed  to  save  the  party.  And  now  I  ask  you  this, 
Mr.  West:  What  show  would  the  friends  of  this  young  man 
have,  if  he  had  a  bad  spot  on  his  record?  What  chance 'd 
there  be  of  namin'  to  lead  the  party  in  the  city  the  man  who 
had  knifed  the  party  in  the  State?11 

West's  chin  rested  upon  his  hand;  his  gaze  fell  dreamily 
upon  the  table-top.  Before  his  mind's  eye  there  had  un 
rolled  a  favorite  vision  —  a  white  meadow  of  faces  focussed 
breathlessly  upon  a  great  orator.  He  recalled  himself  with 
a  start,  a  stretch,  and  a  laugh. 

"Are  n't  you  wandering  rather  carelessly  into  the  future, 
Plonny?" 

"If  I  am,"  said  Mr.  Neal,  solemnly,  "it's  because  you 
stand  at  the  crossroads  to-day." 

West  found  the  office  deserted,  his  assistant  being  gone 
for  lunch.  He  finished  two  short  articles  begun  earlier  in  the 
day,  and  himself  departed  with  an  eye  to  food.  Later,  he 
had  to  attend  a  couple  of  board  meetings,  which  ran  off  into 
protracted  by-talk,  and  the  rainy  twilight  had  fallen  be 
fore  his  office  knew  him  again. 

Not  long  after,  Queed,  already  hatted  and  overcoated  to 
go,  pushed  open  the  connecting  door  and  entered.  The  two 
chatted  a  moment  of  the  make-up  of  next  day's  "page." 
Presently  West  said:  "By  the  bye,  written  anything  about 
the  reformatory?" 

"Anything!"  echoed  Queed,  with  a  faint  smile.  "You 
might  say  that  I  Ve  written  everything  about  it  —  the  best 
article  I  ever  wrote,  I  should  say.  It 's  our  last  chance,  you 
know." 

Queed  thought  of  Eva  Bernheimer,  and  a  light  crept  into 


324  QUEED 

his  ordinarily  impassive  eye.  At  the  same  time,  West's  or 
dinarily  buoyant  face  fell  a  little. 

"That  so?  Let  me  see  how  you 've  handled  it,  will  you? " 

"  Certainly,"  said  Queed,  showing  no  surprise,  though  it 
was  many  a  day  since  any  composition  of  his  had  under 
gone  supervision  in  that  office. 

It  was  on  the  tip  of  West's  tongue  to  add,  "  I  rather  think 
we've  been  pressing  that  matter  too  hard,"  but  he  checked 
himself.  Why  should  he  make  any  explanation  to  his  assist 
ant?  Was  it  not  the  fact  that  he  had  trusted  the  young  man 
too  far  already? 

Queed  brought  his  article  and  laid  it  on  West's  desk,  his 
face  very  thoughtful  now.  "  If  there  is  any  information  I  can 
give  you  about  the  subject,  I  '11  wait." 

West  hardly  repressed  a  smile.  "Thank  you,  I  think  I 
understand  the  situation  pretty  well." 

Still  Queed  lingered  and  hesitated,  most  unlike  himself. 
Presently  he  strolled  over  to  the  window  and  looked  down 
unseeingly  into  the  lamplit  wetness  of  Centre  Street.  In  fact, 
he  was  the  poorest  actor  in  the  world,  and  never  pretended 
anything,  actively  or  passively,  without  being  unhappy. 

"  It 's  raining  like  the  mischief,"  he  offered  uncomfortably. 

"Cats  and  dogs,"  said  West,  his  fingers  twiddling  with 
Queed 's  copy. 

"  By  the  way,"  said  Queed,  turning  with  a  poorly  done  air 
of  casualness,  "what  is  commonly  supposed  to  have  become 
of  Henry  G.  Surface?  Do  people  generally  believe  that  he  is 
dead?" 

"Bless  your  heart,  no!"  said  West,  looking  up  in  some  sur 
prise  at  the  question.  "That  kind  never  die.  They  invari 
ably  live  to  a  green  old  age  —  green  like  the  bay-tree." 

"I — have  gotten  very  much  interested  in  his  story," 
said  Queed,  which  was  certainly  true  enough.  "Where  do 
people  think  that  he  is  now?" 

"Oh,  in  the  West  somewhere,  living  like  a  fat  hog  off  Miss 
Weyland's  money." 

Queed 's  heart  lost  a  beat.    An  instinct,  swift  as  a  reflex, 


QUEED  325 

turned  him  to  the  window  again ;  he  feared  that  his  face  might 
commit  treason.  A  curious  contraction  and  hardening 
seemed  to  be  going  on  inside  of  him,  a  chilling  petrifaction, 
and  this  sensation  remained;  but  in  the  next  instant  he  felt 
himself  under  perfect  control,  and  was  calmly  saying:  — 

"Why,  I  thought  the  courts  took  all  the  money  he  had." 

"They  took  all  they  could  find.  If  you've  studied  high 
finance  you'll  appreciate  the  distinction."  Amiably  West 
tapped  the  table-top  with  the  long  point  of  his  pencil,  and 
wished  that  Queed  would  restore  him  his  privacy.  "Every 
body  thought  at  the  time,  you  know,  that  he  had  a  hundred 
thousand  or  so  put  away  where  the  courts  never  got  hold 
of  it.  The  general  impression  was  that  he  'd  somehow  smug 
gled  it  over  to  the  woman  he  'd  been  living  with  —  his  wife, 
he  said.  She  died,  I  believe,  but  probably  our  friend  Sur 
face,  when  he  got  out,  had  n't  the  slightest  trouble  in  putting 
his  hands  on  the  money." 

"  No,  I  suppose  not.  An  interesting  story,  is  n't  it?  You  '11 
telephone  if  you  need  anything  to-night?" 

"Oh,  I  shan't  need  anything.  The  page  is  shaping  up  very 
satisfactorily,  I  think.  Good-night,  my  dear  fellow." 

Left  alone,  West  picked  up  Queed 's  closely- written  sheets, 
and  leaning  back  in  his  chair  read  them  with  the  closest  at 
tention.  Involuntarily,  his  intellect  paid  a  tribute  to  the 
writer  as  he  read.  The  article  was  masterly.  The  argument 
was  close  and  swift,  the  language  impassioned,  the  style 
piquant.  "Where  did  he  learn  to  write  like  that ! "  wondered 
West.  Here  was  the  whole  subject  compressed  into  half  a 
column,  and  so  luminous  a  half  column  that  the  dullest  could 
not  fail  to  understand  and  admire.  Two  sarcastic  little 
paragraphs  were  devoted  to  stripping  the  tatters  from  the 
nakedness  of  the  economy  argument,  and  these  Mr.  Queed 's 
chief  perused  twice. 

"The  talk  of  a  doctrinaire,"  mused  he  presently.  "The 
closet  philosopher's  ideas.  How  far  afield  from  the  real  situ 
ation.  ..." 

It  was  a  most  fortunate  thing,  he  reflected,  that  he  him- 


326  QUEED 

self  had  means  of  getting  exact  and  accurate  information  at 
first  hand.  Suppose  that  he  had  not,  that,  like  some  editors, 
he  had  simply  passed  this  article  in  without  examination  and 
correction.  It  would  have  made  the  Post  ridiculous,  and  de 
cidedly  impaired  its  reputation  for  common  sense  and  fair 
play.  Whatever  should  or  should  not  be  said,  this  was  cer 
tainly  no  way  to  talk  of  honest  men,  who  were  trying  to 
conserve  the  party  and  who  differed  from  the  Post  only  on 
an  unimportant  question  of  detail. 

West  leaned  back  in  his  chair  and  stared  at  the  farther 
wall.  .  .  .  For  that  was  exactly  what  it  was  —  an  unimport 
ant  detail.  The  important  thing,  the  one  thing  that  he  him 
self  had  insisted  on,  was  that  the  State  should  have  a  reform 
atory.  Whether  the  State  had  it  now  or  two  years  from  now, 
made  relatively  little  difference,  except  to  those  who,  like  his 
editorial  assistant,  had  sunk  themselves  in  the  question  till 
their  sense  of  proportion  had  deserted  them.  Was  not  that 
a  fair  statement  of  the  case?  Whatever  he  did,  he  must  not 
let  his  views  be  colored  by  probable  effects  upon  his  own  fu 
ture.  .  .  .  Surely,  to  wait  two  brief  years  for  the  institu 
tion,  with  the  positive  assurance  of  it  then,  could  be  no  hard 
ship  to  a  State  which  had  got  along  very  well  without  it  for 
all  the  years  of  its  lifetime.  Surely  not.  Plonny  Neal,  whose 
sharp  horse  sense  he  would  back  against  any  man  in  the 
State,  was  absolutely  sound  there. 

He  tried  to  consider  the  question  with  chill  judiciality, 
and  believed  that  he  was  doing  so.  But  the  fervor  which 
Plonny  had  imparted  to  it,  and  the  respect  which  he  had  for 
Plonny's  knowledge  of  practical  conditions,  stood  by  him, 
unconsciously  guiding  his  thoughts  along  the  line  of  least  re 
sistance.  .  .  .  Though  nobody  dared  admit  it  publicly,  the 
party  was  facing  a  great  crisis ;  and  it  was  in  his  hand  to  save 
or  to  wreck  it.  All  eyes  were  anxiously  on  the  Post,  which 
wielded  the  decisive  power.  The  people  had  risen  writh  the 
unreasonable  demand  that  progress  be  checked  for  a  time, 
because  of  the  cost  of  it.  The  leaders  had  responded  to  the 
best  of  their  ability,  but  necessary  expenses  were  so  great 


QUEED  327 

that  it  was  going  to  be  a  narrow  shave  at  best  —  so  narrow 
that  another  hundred  thousand  spent  would  land  the  whole 
kettle  of  fish  in  the  fire.  The  grand  old  party  would  go 
crashing  down  the  precipice.  Was  not  that  a  criminal  price 
to  pay  for  getting  a  reformatory  institution  two  years  be 
fore  the  people  were  ready  to  pay  for  it?  There  was  the 
whole  question  in  a  nutshell. 

The  one  unpleasant  aspect  of  this  view  was  Sharlee  Wey- 
land,  the  dearest  girl  in  the  world.  She  would  be  much  dis 
appointed,  and,  for  the  first  moment,  would  possibly  be 
somewhat  piqued  with  him  personally.  He  knew  that  women 
were  extremely  unreasonable  about  these  things;  they 
looked  at  affairs  from  the  emotional  point  of  view,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  loose,  large  " effect."  But  Sharlee  Wey- 
land  was  highly  intelligent  and  sensible,  and  he  had  not  the 
smallest  doubt  of  his  ability  to  make  her  understand  what 
the  unfortunate  situation  was.  He  could  not  tell  her  every 
thing —  Plonny  had  cautioned  secrecy  about  the  real  gravity 
of  the  crisis  —  but  he  would  tell  her  enough  to  show  her  how 
he  had  acted,  with  keen  regrets,  from  his  sternest  sense  of 
public  duty.  It  was  a  cruel  stroke  of  fate's  that  his  must  be 
the  hand  to  bring  disappointment  to  the  girl  he  loved,  but 
after  all,  would  she  not  be  the  first  to  say  that  he  must  never 
put  his  regard  for  her  preferences  above  the  larger  good  of 
City  and  State?  He  could  not  love  her,  dear,  so  well,  loved 
he  not  honor  more. 

He  picked  up  Queed's  article  and  glanced  again  at  the 
astonishing  words,  words  which,  invested  with  the  Post's 
enormous  prestige,  simply  kicked  and  cuffed  the  party  to 
its  ruin.  A  wave  of  resentment  against  his  assistant  swept 
through  the  editor's  mind.  This  was  what  came  of  trusting 
anything  to  anybody  else.  If  you  wanted  to  be  sure  that 
things  were  done  right,  do  them  yourself.  Because  he  had 
allowed  Queed  a  little  rope,  that  young  man  had  industri 
ously  gathered  in  almost  enough  to  hang,  not  himself,  for  he 
was  nothing,  but  the  Post  and  its  editor.  However,  there  was 
no  use  crying  over  spilt  milk.  What  was  done  was  done.  For- 


328  QUEED 

tunately,  the  Post's  general  position  was  sound ;  had  not  the 
editor  himself  dictated  it?  If  the  expression  of  that  position 
in  cold  type  had  been  gradually  carried  by  a  subordinate  to 
a  more  and  more  violent  extreme,  to  an  intemperance  of 
utterance  which  closely  approached  insanity,  what  was  it 
the  editor's  duty  to  do?  Obviously  to  take  charge  himself 
and  swing  the  position  back  to  a  safe  and  sane  mean,  exactly 
where  he  had  placed  it  to  begin  with.  That  was  all  that  was 
asked  of  him  —  to  shift  back  the  paper's  position  to  where 
he  had  placed  it  in  the  beginning,  and  by  so  doing  to  save 
the  party  from  wreck.  Could  a  sensible  man  hesitate  an 
instant?  And  in  return.  .  .  . 

West's  gaze  wandered  out  of  the  window,  and  far  on  into 
the  beyond.  .  .  .  His  friends  were  watching  him,  silently 
but  fearfully.  Who  and  what  these  friends  were  his  swift 
thought  did  not  stay  to  ask.  His  glamorous  fancy  saw  them 
as  a  great  anxious  throng,  dominant  men,  yet  respectful, 
who  were  trembling  lest  he  should  make  a  fatal  step  —  to 
answer  for  it  with  his  political  life.  Public  life  —  he  rejected 
the  term  political  life  —  was  of  all  things  what  he  was  pre 
eminently  fitted  for.  How  else  could  a  man  so  fully  serve 
his  fellows?  —  how  so  surely  and  strongly  promote  the  up 
lift?  And  Plonny  Neal  had  served  notice  on  him  that  he 
stood  to-day  on  the  crossroads  to  large  public  usefulness. 
The  czar  of  them  all,  the  great  Warwick  who  made  and 
unmade  kings  by  the  lifting  of  his  finger,  had  told  him,  as 
plain  as  language  could  speak,  that  he,  West,  was  his  imperial 
choice  for  the  mayoralty,  with  all  that  that  foreshadowed. 
.  .  .  Truly,  he  had  served  his  apprenticeship,  and  was  meet 
for  his  opportunity.  For  eight  long  months  he  had  stood 
in  line,  doing  his  duty  quietly  and  well,  asking  no  favor  of 
anybody.  And  now  at  last  Warwick  had  beckoned  him  and 
set  the  mystic  star  upon  his  forehead.  .  .  . 

Iridescent  visionry  enwrapped  the  young  man,  and  he 
swam  in  it  goldenly.  In  time  his  spirit  returned  to  his  body, 
and  he  found  himself  leaning  back  in  a  very  matter-of-fact 
chair,  facing  a  very  plain  question.  How  could  the  shift- 


QUEED  329 

ing  back,  the  rationalizing,  of  the  paper's  position  be  accom 
plished  with  the  minimum  of  shock?  How  could  he  rescue 
the  party  with  the  least  possible  damage  to  the  Post's  con 
sistency? 

West  went  to  a  filing  cabinet  in  the  corner  of  the  room, 
pulled  out  a  large  folder  marked,  Reformatory,  and,  return 
ing  to  his  seat,  ran  hurriedly  through  the  Post's  editorials  on 
this  subject  during  the  past  twelvemonth.  Over  some  of  the 
phrases  he  ground  his  teeth.  They  floated  irritatingly  in  his 
head  as  he  once  more  leaned  back  in  his  chair  and  frowned 
at  the  opposite  wall. 

Gradually  there  took  form  in  his  mind  a  line  of  reasoning 
which  would  appear  to  grow  with  some  degree  of  naturalness 
out  of  what  had  gone  before,  harmonizing  the  basic  continu 
ity  of  the  Post's  attitude,  and  minimizing  the  change  in  pre 
sent  angle  or  point  of  view.  His  fertile  mind  played  about 
it,  strengthening  it,  building  it  up,  polishing  and  perfecting; 
and  in  time  he  began  to  write,  at  first  slowly,  but  soon  with 
fluent  ease. 


XXVI 

In  which  Queed  forces  the  Old  Professor's  Hand,  and  the  Old 
Professor  takes  to  his  Bed. 

RAINCOAT  buttoned  to  his  throat,  Queed  set  his  face 
against  the  steady  downpour.  It  was  a  mild,  windless 
night  near  the  end  of  February,  foreshadowing  the 
early  spring  already  nearly  due.  He  had  no  umbrella,  or  wish 
for  one:  the  cool  rain  in  his  face  was  a  refreshment  and  a 
vivifier. 

So  the  worst  had  come  to  the  worst,  and  he  had  been  liv 
ing  for  nearly  a  year  on  Sharlee  Weyland's  money,  stolen 
from  her  by  her  father's  false  friend.  Wormwood  and  gall 
were  the  fruits  that  altruism  had  borne  him.  Two  casual 
questions  had  brought  out  the  shameful  truth,  and  these 
questions  could  have  been  asked  as  easily  a  year  ago  as  now. 

Bitterly  did  the  young  man  reproach  himself  now,  for  his 
criminal  carelessness  in  regard  to  the  sources  of  Surface's 
luxurious  income.  For  the  better  part  of  a  year  he  had  known 
the  old  man  for  an  ex-convict  whose  embezzlings  had  run 
high  into  six  figures.  Yet  he  had  gone  on  fatuously  swallow 
ing  the  story  that  the  money  of  which  the  old  rogue  was  so 
free  represented  nothing  but  the  savings  of  a  thrifty  school 
teacher.  A  dozen  things  came  back  to  him  now  to  give  the 
lie  to  that  tale.  He  thought  of  the  costly  books  that  Surface 
was  constantly  buying;  the  expensive  repairs  he  had  made 
in  his  rented  house ;  the  wine  that  stood  on  the  dinner- table 
every  night ;  the  casual  statement  from  the  old  man  that  he 
meant  to  retire  from  the  school  at  the  end  of  the  present 
session.  Was  there  ever  a  teacher  who  could  live  like  this 
after  a  dozen  years'  roving  work?  And  the  probability  was 
that  Surface  had  never  worked  at  all  until,  returning  to  his 
own  city,  he  had  needed  a  position  as  a  cover  and  a  blind. 


QUEED  331 

Mathematical  computations  danced  through  the  young 
man's  brain.  He  figured  that  their  present  scale  of  living 
must  run  anywhere  from  $3500  to  $5000  a  year.  Surface's 
income  from  the  school  was  known  to  be  $900  a  year.  His 
income  from  his  lodger  was  $390  a  year.  This  difference  be 
tween,  say  $4000  and  $1290,  was  $2710  a  year,  or  4  per  cent 
on  some  $70,000.  And  this  tidy  sum  was  being  filched  from 
the  purse  of  Charlotte  Lee  Weyland,  who  worked  for  her  liv 
ing  at  an  honorarium  of  $75  a  month. 

Queed  walked  with  his  head  lowered,  bent  less  against  the 
rain  than  his  own  stinging  thoughts.  At  the  corner  of  Seventh 
Street  a  knot  of  young  men,  waiting  under  a  dripping  awn 
ing  for  a  car  that  would  not  come,  cried  out  gayly  to  the  Doc ; 
they  were  Mercuries ;  but  the  Doc  failed  to  respond  to  their 
greetings,  or  even  to  hear  them.  He  crossed  the  humming 
street,  northerly,  with  an  experienced  sureness  acquired  since 
his  exploit  with  the  dog  Behemoth ;  and  so  came  into  his  own 
section  of  the  town. 

He  was  an  apostle  of  law  who  of  all  things  loved  harmony. 
Already  his  mind  was  busily  at  work  seeking  to  restore  order 
out  of  the  ruins  of  his  house.  Obviously  the  first  thing  to  do, 
the  one  thing  that  could  not  wait  an  hour,  was  to  get  his 
sense  of  honesty  somehow  back  again.  He  must  compel 
Surface  to  hand  over  to  Miss  Weyland  immediately  every 
cent  of  money  that  he  had.  The  delivery  could  be  arranged 
easily  enough,  without  any  sensational  revelations.  The  let 
ter  to  Miss  Weyland  could  come  from  a  lawyer  in  the  West ; 
in  Australia,  if  the  old  man  liked ;  that  did  n't  matter.  The 
one  thing  that  did  matter  was  that  he  should  immediately 
make  restitution  as  fully  as  lay  within  the  power  of  them 
both. 

Surface,  of  course,  would  desperately  resist  such  a  sug 
gestion.  Queed  knew  of  but  one  club  which  could  drive  him 
to  agree  to  it,  one  goad  which  could  rowel  him  to  the  height. 
This  was  his  own  continued  companionship.  He  could  com 
pel  Surface  to  disgorgement  only  at  the  price  of  a  new  offer 
ing  of  himself  to  the  odious  old  man  who  had  played  false 


332  QUEED 

with  him  as  with  everybody  else.  Queed  did  not  hesitate. 
At  the  moment  every  cost  seemed  small  to  clear  his  dearest 
belonging,  which  was  his  personal  honesty,  of  this  stain. 
As  for  Surface,  nothing  could  make  him  more  detestable  in 
a  moral  sense  than  he  had  been  all  along.  He  had  been  a  thief 
and  a  liar  from  the  beginning.  Once  the  cleansing  storm  was 
over,  their  unhappy  domestic  union  could  go  on  much  as  it 
had  done  before. 

For  his  part,  he  must  at  once  set  about  restoring  his  half 
of  the  joint  living  expenses  consumed  during  the  past  nine 
months.  This  money  could  be  passed  in  through  the  lawyer 
with  the  rest,  so  that  she  would  never  know.  Obviously,  he 
would  have  to  make  more  money  than  he  was  making  now, 
which  meant  that  he  would  have  to  take  still  more  time  from 
his  book.  There  were  his  original  tax  articles  in  the  Postj 
which  a  publisher  had  asked  him  at  the  time  to  work  over 
into  a  primer  for  college  use.  There  might  be  a  few  hundreds 
to  be  made  there.  He  could  certainly  place  some  articles 
in  the  reviews.  If  for  the  next  twelve  months  he  ruthlessly 
eliminated  everything  from  his  life  that  did  not  bring  in 
money,  he  could  perhaps  push  his  earnings  for  the  next  year 
to  three  thousand  dollars,  which  would  be  enough  to  see  him 
through.  .  .  . 

And  busy  with  thoughts  like  these,  he  came  home  to  Sur 
face's  pleasant  little  house,  and  was  greeted  by  the  old  man 
with  kindness  and  good  cheer. 

It  was  dinner-time  —  for  they  dined  at  night  now,  in 
some  state  —  and  they  sat  down  to  four  dainty  courses, 
cooked  and  served  by  the  capable  Henderson.  The  table 
was  a  round  one,  so  small  that'  the  two  men  could  have 
shaken  hands  across  it  without  the  smallest  exertion.  By 
old  Surface's  plate  stood  a  gold-topped  bottle,  containing, 
not  the  ruddy  burgundy  which  had  become  customary  of 
late,  but  sparkling  champagne.  Surface  referred  to  it,  grace 
fully,  as  his  medicine;  doctors,  he  said,  were  apparently  un 
der  the  delusion  that  schoolmasters  had  bottomless  purses. 
To  this  pleasantry  Queed  made  no  reply.  He  was,  indeed, 


QUEED  333 

spare  with  his  remarks  that  evening,  and  his  want  of  appe 
tite  grieved  old  Henderson  sorely. 

The  servant  brought  the  coffee  and  retired.  He  would  not 
be  back  again  till  he  was  rung  for:  that  was  the  iron  rule. 
The  kitchen  was  separated  from  the  dining-room  by  a  pantry 
and  two  doors.  Thus  the  diners  were  as  private  as  they  were 
ever  likely  to  be  in  this  world,  and  in  the  breast  of  one  of 
them  was  something  that  would  brook  no  more  delay. 

"Professor,"  said  this  one,  with  a  face  which  gave  no  sign 
of  inner  turmoil,  "I  find  myself  obliged  to  refer  once  more 
to  —  an  unwelcome  subject." 

Surface  was  reaching  for  his  coffee  cup;  he  was  destined 
never  to  pick  it  up.  His  hand  fell;  found  the  edge  of  the 
table;  his  long  fingers  gripped  and  closed  over  it. 

"Ah?"  he  said  easily,  not  pretending  to  doubt  what  sub 
ject  was  meant.  " I'm  sorry.  I  thought  that  we  had  laid  the 
old  ghosts  for  good." 

"  I  thought  so,  too.    I  was  mistaken,  it  seems." 

Across  the  table,  the  two  men  looked  at  each  other.  To 
Surface,  the  subject  must  indeed  have  been  the  most  un 
welcome  imaginable,  especially  when  forced  upon  him  with 
so  ominous  a  directness.  Yet  his  manner  was  the  usual  bland 
mask;  his  face,  rather  like  a  bad  Roman  senator's  in  the 
days  of  the  decline,  had  undergone  no  perceptible  change. 

"When  I  came  here  to  live  with  you,"  said  Queed,  "I 
understood,  of  course,  that  you  would  be  contributing  sev 
eral  times  as  much  toward  our  joint  expenses  as  I.  To  a  cer 
tain  degree,  you  would  be  supporting  me.  Naturally,  I  did 
not  altogether  like  that.  But  you  constantly  assured  me,  you 
may  remember,  that  you  would  rather  put  your  savings  into 
a  home  than  anything  else,  that  you  could  not  manage  it 
without  my  assistance,  and  that  you  considered  my  com 
panionship  as  fully  offsetting  the  difference  in  the  money  we 
paid.  So  I  became  satisfied  that  the  arrangement  was  honor 
able  to  us  both." 

Surface  spoke  with  fine  courtesy.  "All  this  is  so  true, 
your  contribution  toward  making  our  house  a  home  has 


334  QUEED 

been  so  much  greater  than  my  own,  that  I  feel  certain  nothing 
can  have  happened  to  disturb  your  satisfaction." 

"Yes,"  said  Queed.  "  I  have  assumed  all  the  time  that  the 
money  you  were  spending  here  was  your  own." 

There  was  a  silence.  Queed  looked  at  the  table-cloth.  He 
had  just  become  aware  that  his  task  was  hateful  to  him.  The 
one  thing  to  do  was  to  get  it  over  as  swiftly  and  decisively 
as  possible. 

"I  am  at  a  loss,"  said  the  old  man,  dryly,  "to  understand 
where  the  assumption  comes  in,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  I 
have  stated,  more  than  once  — " 

"I  am  forced  to  tell  you  that  I  cannot  accept  these  state 
ments." 

For  a  moment  the  brilliant  eyes  looked  dangerous.  "Are 
you  aware  that  your  language  is  exceedingly  offensive?" 

"Yes.  I  'm  very  sorry.  Nevertheless,  this  tooth  must  come 
out.  It  has  suddenly  become  apparent  to  me  that  you  must 
be  spending  here  the  income  on  hardly  less  than  seventy- 
five  thousand  dollars.  Do  you  seriously  ask  me  to  believe, 
now  that  I  directly  bring  up  the  matter,  that  you  amassed 
this  by  a  few  years  of  school-teaching?" 

Surface  lit  a  cigarette,  and,  taking  a  slow  puff,  looked  un- 
winkingly  into  the  young  man's  eyes,  which  looked  as  stead 
ily  back  into  his  own.  "You  are  mistaken  in  assuming," 
he  said  sternly,  "that,  in  giving  you  my  affection,  I  have 
given  you  any  right  to  cross-examine  me  in  — " 

"Yes,  you  gave  it  to  me  when  you  invited  me  to  your 
house  as,  in  part,  your  guest  — " 

"I  am  behind  the  times,  indeed,  if  it  is  esteemed  the 
privilege  of  a  guest  to  spy  upon  his  host." 

"That,"  said  Queed,  quietly,  "is  altogether  unjust.  You 
must  know  that  I  am  not  capable  of  spying  on  you.  I  have, 
on  the  contrary,  been  culpably  short-sighted.  Never  once 
have  I  doubted  anything  you  told  me  until  you  yourself 
insisted  on  rubbing  doubts  repeatedly  into  my  eyes.  Pro 
fessor,"  he  went  on  rapidly,  "are  you  aware  that  those 
familiar  with  your  story  say  that,  when  you  —  that,  after 


QUEED  335 

your  misfortune,  you  started  life  again  with  a  bank  account 
of  between  one  and  two  hundred  thousand  dollars?" 

The  black  eyes  lit  up  like  two  shoe-buttons  in  the  sun 
light.  "That  is  a  wicked  falsehood,  invented  at  the  time  by 
a  lying  reporter  — " 

"Do  you  assert  that  everything  you  have  now  has  been 
earned  since  your  misfortune?" 

"Precisely  that." 

The  voice  was  indignantly  firm,  but  Queed,  looking  into 
the  old  man's  face,  read  there  as  plain  as  day  that  he  was 
lying. 

"Think  a  moment,"  he  said  sorrowfully.  "This  is  pretty 
serious,  you  see.  Are  you  absolutely  sure  that  you  carried 
over  nothing  at  all?" 

"  In  the  sight  of  God,  I  did  not.  But  let  me  tell  you,  my 
friend—" 

A  chair-leg  scraped  on  the  carpeted  floor,  and  Queed  was 
standing,  playing  his  trump  card  with  a  grim  face. 

"We  must  say  good-by,  Professor  —  now.  I'll  send  for 
my  things  in  the  morning." 

"What  do  you  mean,  you  —  " 

"That  you  and  I  part  company  to-night.   Good-by." 

"  Stop ! "  cried  Surface.  He  rose,  greatly  excited  and  leaned 
over  the  table.  A  faint  flush  drove  the  yellow  from  his  cheek ; 
his  eyes  were  blazing.  He  shook  a  menacing  finger  at  close 
range  in  Queed's  face,  which  remained  entirely  unmoved  by 
the  demonstration. 

"So  this  is  the  reward  of  my  kindness  and  affection!  I 
won't  endure  it,  do  you  understand  ?  I  won't  be  kicked  into 
the  gutter  like  an  old  shoe,  do  you  hear?  Sit  down  in  that 
chair.  I  forbid  you  to  leave  the  house." 

Queed's  gaze  was  more  formidable  than  his  own.  "Mr. 
Surface,"  he  said,  in  a  peculiarly  quiet  voice,  "you  forget 
yourself  strangely.  You  are  in  no  position  to  speak  to  me 
like  this." 

Surface  appeared  suddenly  to  agree  with  him.  He  fell 
back  into  his  chair  and  dropped  his  face  into  his  hands. 


336  QUEED 

Queed,  standing  where  he  was,  watched  him  across  the 
tiny  dinner-table  and,  against  his  reason,  felt  very  sorry. 
How  humiliating  this  ripping  up  of  old  dishonor  was  to  the 
proud  old  man,  rogue  though  he  was,  he  understood  well 
enough.  From  nobody  in  the  world  but  him,  he  knew,  would 
Surface  ever  have  suffered  it  to  proceed  as  far  as  this,  and 
this  knowledge  made  him  want  to  handle  the  knife  with  as 
little  roughness  as  possible. 

"I — was  wrong,"  said  the  muffled  voice.  "I  ask  your 
forgiveness  for  my  outbreak." 

"You  have  it." 

Surface  straightened  himself  up,  and,  by  an  obvious  effort, 
managed  to  recapture  something  like  his  usual  smoothness 
of  voice  and  manner. 

"Will  you  be  good  enough  to  sit  down?  I  will  tell  you  what 
you  wish." 

"Certainly.   Thank  you." 

Queed  resumed  his  seat.  His  face  was  a  little  pale,  but 
otherwise  just  as  usual.  Inwardly,  after  the  moment  of  crit 
ical  uncertainty,  he  was  shaken  by  a  tempest  of  fierce  exulta 
tion.  His  club,  after  all,  was  going  to  be  strong  enough ;  the 
old  man  would  give  up  the  money  rather  than  give  up  him. 

Surface  picked  up  his  cigarette.  All  his  storm  signals  had 
disappeared  as  by  magic. 

"I  did  manage,"  began  the  old  man,  flicking  off  his  ash 
with  an  admirable  effect  of  calm,  "to  save  a  small  nest-egg 
from  the  wreck,  to  keep  me  from  the  poorhouse  in  my  old 
age.  I  did  not  wish  to  tell  you  this  because,  with  your  lack 
of  acquaintance  with  business  methods,  the  details  would 
only  confuse,  and  possibly  mislead,  you.  I  had,  too,  another 
reason  for  wishing  to  keep  it  a  surprise.  You  have  forced 
me,  against  my  preferences,  to  tell  you.  As  to  this  small 
pittance,"  he  said,  without  the  flicker  of  an  eye-lash,  "any 
court  in  the  country  would  tell  you  that  it  is  fairly  and 
honorably  mine." 

"Thank  you.  I  appreciate  your  telling  me  this."  Queed 
leaned  over  the  table,  and  began  speaking  in  a  quiet,  brisk 


QUEED  337 

voice.  "Now,  then,  here  is  the  situation.  You  have  a  certain 
sum  of  money  put  away  somewhere,  estimated  to  be  not  less 
than  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  — " 

"Nothing  of  the  sort!  Far  less  than  that!  A  few  beggarly 
thousands,  which  — " 

"Very  well  —  a  few  thousands.  Of  course  your  books  will 
readily  show  the  exact  figures.  This  money  was  withheld 
at  the  time  your  affairs  were  settled,  and  therefore  was  not 
applied  to  reducing  the  —  the  loss  on  the  trustee  account. 
Of  course,  if  its  existence  had  been  known,  it  would  have 
been  so  applied.  In  other  words,  the  Weyland  estate  has 
been  deprived  to  the  exact  extent  of  the  sum  withheld. 
Fortunately,  it  is  never  too  late  to  correct  an  error  of  this 
sort.  My  idea  is  that  we  should  make  the  restitution  with 
out  the  loss  of  an  unnecessary  day." 

Doubtless  the  old  man  had  seen  it  coming ;  he  heard  the 
galling  proposal  with  a  face  which  showed  nothing  stronger 
than  profound  surprise.  "Restitution!  My  dear  boy,  I 
owe  no  restitution  to  any  one." 

"You  hardly  take  the  position  that  you  have  acquired  a 
title  to  the  Weyland  trustee  funds?" 

"Ah,  there  it  is!"  purred  Surface,  making  a  melancholy 
gesture.  "You  see  why  I  did  not  wish  to  open  up  this  com 
plicated  subject.  Your  ignorance,  if  you  will  pardon  me,  of 
modern  business  procedure,  makes  it  very  difficult  for  you 
to  grasp  the  matter  in  its  proper  bearings.  Without  going 
into  too  much  detail,  let  me  try  to  explain  it  to  you.  This 
settlement  of  my  affairs  that  you  speak  of  was  forcibly  done 
by  the  courts,  in  the  interest  of  others,  and  to  my  great  injury. 
The  rascals  set  out  to  cut  my  throat  —  was  it  required  of 
me  to  whet  the  knife  for  them?  They  set  out  to  strip  me  of 
the  last  penny  I  had,  and  they  had  every  advantage,  despotic 
powers,  with  complete  access  to  all  my  private  papers.  If 
the  robbers  overlooked  something  that  I  had,  a  bagatelle  I 
needed  for  the  days  of  my  adversity,  was  it  my  business  to 
pluck  them  by  the  sleeve  and  turn  traitor  to  myself?  Why, 
the  law  itself  gave  me  what  they  passed  over.  I  was  declared 


338  QUEED 

a  bankrupt.  Don't  you  know  what  that  means?  It  means 
that  the  courts  assumed  responsibility  for  my  affairs,  paid 
off  my  creditors,  and,  as  a  small  compensation  for  having 
robbed  me,  wiped  the  slate  clean  and  declared  me  free 
of  all  claims.  And  this  was  twenty-five  years  ago.  My 
dear  boy!  Read  the  Bankruptcy  Act.  Ask  a  lawyer,  any 
lawyer — " 

"Let  us  not  speak  of  lawyers  —  now,"  interrupted  Queed, 
stirring  in  his  chair.  "Let  their  opinion  wait  as  a  last  alter 
native,  which,  I  earnestly  hope,  need  never  be  used  at  all. 
I  am  not  bringing  up  this  point  to  you  now  as  a  legal  ques 
tion,  but  as  a  moral  one." 

"Ah!  You  do  not  find  that  the  morals  provided  by  the 
law  are  good  enough  for  you,  then?" 

"If  your  reading  of  the  law  is  correct  —  of  which  I  am 
not  so  certain  as  you  are,  I  fear  —  it  appears  that  they  are 
not.  But—" 

"It  is  my  misfortune,"  interrupted  the  old  man,  his  hand 
tightening  on  the  table-edge,  "that  your  sympathies  are  not 
with  me  in  the  matter.  Mistaken  sentiment,  youthful 
Quixotism,  lead  you  to  take  an  absurdly  distorted  view  of 
what  — " 

"No,  I'm  afraid  not.  You  see,  when  stripped  of  all  un 
necessary  language,  the  repulsive  fact  is  just  this:  we  are 
living  here  on  money  that  was  unlawfully  abstracted  from 
the  Weyland  estate.  No  matter  what  the  law  may  say,  we 
know  that  this  money  morally  belongs  to  its  original  owners. 
Now  I  ask  you  — " 

"Let  me  put  it  another  way.  I  can  show  you  exactly 
where  your  misapprehension  is  — " 

Queed  stopped  him  short  by  a  gesture.  "My  mind  is  so 
clear  on  this  point  that  discussion  only  wastes  our  time." 

The  young  man's  burst  of  exultation  was  all  but  still 
born;  already  despair  plucked  chilly  at  his  heart-strings. 
For  the  first  time  the  depth  of  his  feeling  broke  through  into 
his  voice:  "Say,  if  you  like  that  I  am  unreasonable,  ignorant, 
unfair.  Put  it  all  down  to  besotted  prejudice.  .  .  .  Can't  you 


QUEED  339 

restore  this  money  because  I  ask  it?  Won't  you  do  it  as  a 
favor  to  me?" 

Surface's  face  became  agitated.  "  I  believe  there  is  nothing 
else  in  the  world  —  that  I  would  n't  do  for  you  —  a  thou 
sand  times  over  —  but  —  " 

Then  Queed  threw  the  last  thing  that  he  had  to  offer  into 
the  scales,  namely  himself.  He  leaned  over  the  table  and 
fixed  the  old  man  with  imploring  eyes. 

"I'd  do  my  best  to  make  it  up  to  you.  I'll  —  I'll  live 
with  you  till  one  or  the  other  of  us  dies.  You  '11  have  some 
body  to  take  care  of  you  when  you  are  old,  and  there  will 
never  be  any  talk  of  the  poorhouse  between  you  and  me.  It 
can  all  be  arranged  quietly  through  a  lawyer,  Professor — and 
nobody  will  guess  your  secret.  You  and  I  will  find  quiet 
lodgings  somewhere,  and  live  together  —  as  friends  —  live 
cleanly,  honorably,  honestly — " 

"For  God's  sake,  stop!"  said  Surface,  in  a  broken  voice. 
"This  is  more  than  I  can  bear." 

So  Queed  knew  that  it  was  hopeless,  and  that  the  old  man 
meant  to  cling  to  his  dishonored  money,  and  let  his  friend 
go.  He  sank  back  in  his  chair,  sick  at  heart,  and  a  painful 
silence  fell. 

"If  I  refuse,"  Surface  took  up  the  theme,  "it  is  for  your 
sake  as  well  as  mine.  My  boy,  you  don't  know  what  you 
ask.  It  is  charity,  mere  mad  charity  to  people  whom  I  have 
no  love  for,  who  — " 

"Then,"  said  Queed,  "two  things  must  happen.  First,  I 
must  lay  the  facts  before  Miss  Weyland." 

Surface's  manner  changed;  his  eyes  became  unpleasant. 
"You  are  not  serious.  You  can  hardly  mean  to  repeat  to 
anybody  what  I  have  told  you  in  sacred  confidence." 

Queed  smiled  sadly.  "  No,  you  have  not  told  me  anything 
in  confidence.  You  have  never  told  me  anything  until  I  first 
found  it  out  for  myself,  and  then  only  because  denial  was 
useless." 

"When  I  told    you   my  story  last   June,  you  assured 


340  QUEED 

"  However,  you  have  just  admitted  that  what  you  told  me 
last  June  was  not  the  truth." 

Again  their  eyes  clashed,  and  Surface,  whose  face  was 
slowly  losing  all  its  color,  even  the  sallowness,  found  no  sign 
of  yielding  in  those  of  the  younger  man. 

Queed  resumed :  "However,  I  do  not  mean  that  I  shall  tell 
her  who  you  are,  unless  you  yourself  compel  me  to.  I  shall 
simply  let  her  know  that  you  are  known  to  be  alive,  within 
reach  of  the  courts,  and  in  possession  of  a  certain  sum  of 
money  withheld  from  the  trustee  funds.  This  will  enable 
her  to  take  the  matter  up  with  her  lawyers  and,  as  I  believe, 
bring  it  before  the  courts.  If  her  claim  is  sustained,  she  would 
doubtless  give  you  the  opportunity  to  make  restitution 
through  intermediaries,  and  thus  sensational  disclosures 
might  be  avoided.  However,  I  make  you  no  promises  about 
that." 

Surface  drew  a  breath ;  he  permitted  his  face  to  show  signs 
of  relief.  "Since  my  argument  and  knowledge  carry  so  little 
weight  with  you,"  he  said  with  a  fine  air  of  dignity,  "I  am 
willing  to  let  the  courts  convince  you,  if  you  insist.  But  I 
do  beg  — " 

Queed  cut  him  short ;  he  felt  that  he  could  not  bear  one 
of  the  old  man's  grandiloquent  speeches  now.  "There  is 
one  other  thing  that  must  be  mentioned,  "he  said  in  a  tired 
voice.  "You  understand,  of  course,  that  I  can  live  here  no 
longer." 

"My  God!  Don't  say  that!  Are  n't  you  satisfied  with 
what  you've  done  to  me  without  that!" 

"I  haven't  done  anything  to  you.  Whatever  has  been 
done,  you  have  deliberately  done  to  yourself.  I  have  no  de 
sire  to  hurt  or  injure  you.  But  —  what  are  you  thinking 
about,  to  imagine  that  I  could  continue  to  live  here — on 
this  money?" 

"You  contradict  yourself  twice  in  the  same  breath!  You 
j  ust  said  that  you  would  let  the  courts  settle  that  question  — ' ' 

"As  to  the  Weyland  estate's  claim,  yes.  But  I  do  not  let 
the  courts  regulate  my  own  sense  of  honor." 


QUEED  341 

Surface,  elbows  on  the  table,  buried  his  face  in  his  hands. 
Queed  slowly  rose,  a  heart  of  lead  in  his  breast.  He  had 
failed.  He  had  offered  all  that  he  had,  and  it  had  been  un 
hesitatingly  kicked  aside.  And,  unless  long  litigation  was 
started,  and  unless  it  ultimately  succeeded,  Henry  G.  Sur 
face  would  keep  his  loot. 

He  glanced  about  the  pleasant  little  dining-room,  symbol 
of  the  only  home  he  had  ever  known,  where,  after  all,  he 
had  done  great  work,  and  been  not  unhappy.  Personally,  he 
was  glad  to  leave  it,  glad  to  stand  out  from  the  shadow  of  the 
ruin  of  Henry  G.  Surface.  Nevertheless  it  was  a  real  part 
ing,  the  end  of  an  epoch  in  his  life,  and  there  was  sadness  in 
that.  Sadness,  too,  he  saw,  deeper  than  his  repugnance  and 
anger,  in  the  bowed  figure  before  him,  the  lost  old  man  whom 
he  was  to  leave  solitary  henceforward.  Saddest  of  all  was 
the  consciousness  of  his  own  terrible  failure. 

He  began  speaking  in  a  controlled  voice. 

"This  interview  is  painful  to  us  both.  It  is  useless  to  pro 
long  it.  I  —  have  much  to  thank  you  for  —  kindness  which 
I  do  not  forget  now  and  shall  not  forget.  If  you  ever  recon 
sider  your  decision  —  if  you  should  ever  need  me  for  any 
thing  —  I  shall  be  within  call.  And  now  I  must  leave  you 
.  .  .  sorrier  than  I  can  say  that  our  parting  must  be  like 
this."  He  paused:  his  gaze  rested  on  the  bent  head,  and  he 
offered,  without  hope,  the  final  chance.  "Your  mind  is  quite 
made  up?  You  are  sure  that  —  this  —  is  the  way  you  wish 
the  matter  settled?" 

Surface  took  his  face  from  his  hands  and  looked  up.  His 
expression  was  a  complete  surprise.  It  was  neither  savage 
nor  anguished,  but  ingratiating,  complacent,  full  of  sup 
pressed  excitement.  Into  his  eyes  had  sprung  an  indescrib 
able  look  of  cunning,  the  look  of  a  broken-down  diplomat 
about  to  outwit  his  adversary  with  a  last  unsuspected  card. 

"No,  no!  Of  course  I'll  not  let  you  leave  me  like  this," 
he  said,  with  a  kind  of  trembling  eagerness,  and  gave  a 
rather  painful  laugh.  "You  force  my  hand.  I  had  not  meant 
to  tell  you  my  secret  so  soon.  You  can't  guess  the  real  reason 


342  QUEED 

why  I  refuse  to  give  my  money  to  Miss  Weyland,  even  when 
you  ask  it,  now  can  you?   You  can't  guess,  now  can  you?" 

"  I  think  I  can.  You  had  rather  have  the  money  than  have 
me." 

"Not  a  bit  of  it.  Nothing  of  the  kind!  Personally  I  care 
nothing  for  the  money.  I  am  keeping  it,"  said  the  old  man, 
lowering  his  voice  to  a  chuckling  whisper,  "for  you!"  He 
leaned  over  the  table,  fixing  Queed  with  a  gaze  of  triumphant 
cunning.  "I'm  going  to  make  you  my  heir!  Leave  every 
thing  I  have  in  the  world  to  you!" 

A  wave  of  sick  disgust  swept  through  the  young  man, 
momentarily  engulfing  his  power  of  speech.  Never  had  the 
old  man's  face  looked  so  loathsome  to  him,  never  the  man 
himself  appeared  so  utterly  detestable. 

Surface  had  risen,  whispering  and  chuckling.  "Come  up  to 
the  sitting-room,  my  dear  boy.  I  have  some  papers  up  there 
that  may  open  your  eyes.  You  need  never  work  — 

"Stop!"  said  Queed,  and  the  old  man  stopped  in  his 
tracks.  "Can't  I  make  you  understand?"  he  went  on, 
fighting  hard  for  calmness.  "Isn't  it  clear  to  you  that 
nothing  could  induce  me  to  touch  another  penny  of  this 
money?" 

' '  Ah ! ' '  said  Surface,  in  his  softest  voice.  ' '  Ah !  And  might 
I  inquire  the  reason  for  this  heroic  self-restraint?" 

"You  choose  your  words  badly.  It  is  no  restraint  to  hon 
est  men  to  decline  to  take  other  people's  money." 

"Ah,  I  see.  I  see.  I  see,"  said  Surface,  nodding  his  shining 
hairless  head  up  and  down. 

"Good-by." 

" No,  no,"  said  the  old  man,  in  an  odd  thick  voice.  "Not 
quite  yet,  if  you  please.  There  is  still  something  that  I  want 
to  say  to  you." 

He  came  slowly  around  the  tiny  table,  and  Queed  watched 
his  coming  with  bursts  of  fierce  repugnance  which  set  his 
hard-won  muscles  to  twitching.  An  elemental  satisfaction 
there  might  be  in  throwing  the  old  man  through  the  window. 
Yet,  in  a  truer  sense,  he  felt  that  the  necessity  of  manhan- 


QUEED  343 

dling  him  would  be  the  final  touch  in  this  degrading  inter 
view. 

"You  value  your  society  too  high,  my  dear  boy,"  said 
Surface  with  a  face  of  chalk.  "You  want  too  big  a  price. 
I  must  fork  over  every  penny  I  have,  to  a  young  trollop  who 
happens  to  have  caught  your  fancy  — " 

"Stand  away  from  me!"  cried  Queed,  with  a  face  sud 
denly  whiter  than  his  own.  "You  will  tempt  me  to  do  what 
I  shall  be  sorry  for  afterwards." 

But  Surface  did  not  budge,  and  to  strike,  after  all,  was 
hardly  possible;  it  would  be  no  better  than  murder.  The 
two  men  stood,  white  face  to  white  face,  the  two  pairs  of 
fearless  eyes  scarcely  a  foot  apart.  And  beyond  all  the  ob 
vious  dissimilarity,  there  appeared  a  curious  resemblance 
in  the  two  faces  at  that  moment :  in  each  the  same  habit  of 
unfaltering  gaze,  the  same  high  forehead,  the  same  clean-cut 
chin,  the  same  straight,  thin-lipped  mouth. 

"Oh,  I  see  through  you  clearly  enough,"  said  Surface. 
"You're  in  love  with  her!  You  think  it  is  a  pretty  thing  to 
sacrifice  me  to  her,  especially  as  the  sacrifice  costs  you 
nothing  — " 

"Stop!  Will  you  force  me  in  the  name  of  common  de 
cency  —  " 

"But  I  '11  not  permit  you  to  do  it,  do  you  hear?  "  continued 
Surface,  his  face  ablaze,  his  lower  lip  trembling  and  twitch 
ing,  as  it  does  sometimes  with  the  very  old.  "You  need  some 
discipline,  my  boy.  Need  some  discipline  —  and  you  shall 
have  it.  You  will  continue  to  live  with  me  exactly  as  you 
have  heretofore,  only  henceforward  I  shall  direct  your  move 
ments  and  endeavor  to  improve  your  manners." 

He  swayed  slightly  where  he  stood,  and  Queed 's  tense 
ness  suddenly  relaxed.  Pity  rose  in  his  heart  above  furious 
resentment;  he  put  out  his  hand  and  touched  the  old  man's 
arm. 

"Control  yourself,"  he  said  in  an  iron  voice.  "Come  — 
I  will  help  you  to  bed  before  I  go." 

Surface  shook  himself  free,  and  laughed  unpleasantly. 


344  QUEED 

"Go!  Did  n't  you  hear  me  tell  you  that  you  were  not  going? 
Who  do  you  think  I  am  that  you  can  flout  and  browbeat 
and  threaten — " 

"Come  !  Let  us  go  up  to  bed  — " 

"Who  do  you  think  I  am!"  repeated  Surface,  bringing  his 
twitching  face  nearer,  his  voice  breaking  to  sudden  shrillness. 
"Who  do  you  think  I  am,  I  say?" 

Queed  thought  the  old  man  had  gone  off  his  head,  and 
indeed  he  looked  it.  He  began  soothingly:  "You  are  — " 

"I'm  your  father!  Your  father,  do  you  hear!"  cried  Sur 
face.  "  You  're  my  son — Henry  G.  Surface,  Jr.  !  " 

This  time,  Queed,  looking  with  a  wild  sudden  terror  into 
the  flaming  eyes,  knew  that  he  heard  the  truth  from  Surface 
at  last.  The  revelation  broke  upon  him  in  a  stunning  flash. 
He  sprang  away  from  the  old  man  with  a  movement  of  loath 
ing  unspeakable. 

"Father!"  he  said,  in  a  dull  curious  whisper.  "0  God! 
Father!" 

Surface  gazed  at  him,  his  upper  lip  drawn  up  into  his  old 
purring  sneer. 

"So  that  is  how  you  feel  about  it,  my  son?"  he  inquired 
suavely,  and  suddenly  crumpled  down  upon  the  floor. 

The  young  man  shook  him  by  the  shoulder,  but  he  did 
not  stir.  Henderson  came  running  at  the  sound  of  the  fall, 
and  together  they  bore  the  old  man,  breathing,  but  inert  as 
the  dead,  to  his  room.  In  an  hour,  the  doctor  had  come  and 
gone.  In  two  hours,  a  trained  nurse  was  sitting  by  the  bed  as 
though  she  had  been  there  always.  The  doctor  called  it  a 
"stroke,"  superinduced  by  a  "shock."  He  said  that  Profes 
sor  Nicolovius  might  live  for  a  week,  or  a  year,  but  was 
hardly  likely  to  speak  again  on  this  side  the  dark  river  that 
runs  round  the  world. 


XXVII 

Sharlee  Weyland  reads  the  Morning  Post;  of  Rev.  Mr.  Dayne's 
Fight  at  Ephesus  and  the  Telephone  Message  that  never 
came;  of  the  Editor's  Comment  upon  the  Assistant  Editor's 
Resignation,  which  perhaps  lacked  Clarity;  and  of  how  Eight 
Men  elect  a  Mayor. 

NEXT  morning,  in  the  first  moment  she  had,  Sharlee 
Weyland  read  the  Post's  editorial  on  the  reforma 
tory.  And  as  she  read  she  felt  as  though  the  skies 
had  fallen,  and  the  friendly  earth  suddenly  risen  up  and 
smitten  her. 

It  was  a  rainy  morning,  the  steady  downpour  of  the  night 
before  turned  into  a  fine  drizzle;  and  Sharlee,  who  nearly 
always  walked,  took  the  car  downtown.  She  was  late  this 
morning;  there  had  been  but  flying  minutes  she  could  give 
to  breakfast ;  not  a  second  to  give  to  anything  else ;  and  there 
fore  she  took  the  Post  with  her  to  read  on  the  ride  to  "the" 
office.  And,  seating  herself,  she  turned  immediately  to  the 
editorial  page,  in  which  the  State  Department  of  Charities 
felt  an  especial  interest  this  morning. 

Both  the  name  and  the  position  of  the  editorial  were  im 
mediately  disappointing  to  her.  It  was  not  in  the  leading 
place,  and  its  caption  was  simply  "As  to  the  Reformatory," 
which  seemed  to  her  too  colorless  and  weak.  Subconsciously, 
she  passed  the  same  judgment  upon  the  opening  sentences 
of  the  text,  which  somehow  failed  to  ring  out  that  challenge 
to  the  obstructionists  she  had  confidently  expected.  As  she 
read  further,  her  vague  disappointment  gave  way  to  a  sudden 
breathless  incredulity ;  that  to  a  heartsick  rigidity  of  atten 
tion  ;  and  when  she  went  back,  and  began  to  read  the  whole 
article  over,  slowly  and  carefully,  from  the  beginning,  her  face 
was  about  the  color  of  the  pretty  white  collar  she  wore. 


346  QUEED 

For  what  she  was  looking  on  at  was,  so  it  seemed  to  her,  not 
simply  the  killing  of  the  chief  ambition  of  her  two  years' 
work,  but  the  treacherous  murder  of  it  in  the  house  of  its 
friends. 

As  she  reread  "As  to  the  Reformatory,"  she  became  im 
pressed  by  its  audacious  cleverness.  It  would  have  been  im 
possible  to  manage  a  tremendous  shift  in  position  with  more 
consummate  dexterity.  Indeed,  she  was  almost  ready  to 
take  the  Post's  word  for  it  that  no  shift  at  all  had  been  made. 
From  beginning  to  end  the  paper's  unshakable  loyalty  to 
the  reformatory  was  everywhere  insisted  upon ;  that  was  the 
strong  keynote;  the  ruinous  qualifications  were  slipped  in,  as 
it  were,  reluctantly,  hard-wrung  concessions  to  indisputable 
and  overwhelming  evidence.  But  there  they  were,  scarcely 
noticeable  to  the  casual  reader,  perhaps,  but  to  passionate 
partisans  sticking  up  like  palm-trees  on  a  plain.  In  a  back 
handed,  sinuous  but  unmistakable  way,  the  Post  was  telling 
the  legislature  that  it  had  better  postpone  the  reformatory 
for  another  two  years.  It  was  difficult  to  say  just  what 
phrase  or  phrases  finally  pushed  the  odious  idea  out  into 
the  light;  but  Sharlee  lingered  longest  on  a  passage  which, 
after  referring  to  the  "list  of  inescapable  expenditures  pub 
lished  elsewhere,"  said: 

Immediacy,  of  course,  was  never  the  great  question;  but  it  was  a 
question;  and  the  Post  has  therefore  watched  with  keen  regret  the 
rolling  up  of  absolutely  unavoidable  expenses  to  the  point  where  the 
spending  of  another  dollar  for  any  cause,  however  meritorious  in  itself, 
must  be  regarded  as  of  dubious  wisdom. 

That  sentence  was  enough.  It  would  be  as  good  as  a  vol 
ume  to  the  powerful  opposition  in  the  House,  hardly  re 
pressed  heretofore  by  the  Post's  thunders.  The  reformatory, 
which  they  had  labored  for  so  long,  was  dead. 

The  thought  was  bitter  to  the  young  assistant  secretary. 
But  from  the  first,  her  mind  had  jumped  beyond  it,  to  fasten 
on  another  and,  to  her,  far  worse  one,  a  burning  personal 
question  by  the  side  of  which  the  loss  of  the  reformatory 
seemed  for  the  moment  an  unimportant  detail. 


QUEED  347 

Which  of  the  two  men  had  done  it  ? 

Rev.  Mr.  Dayne  was  sitting  bowed  over  his  desk,  his  strong 
head  clamped  in  his  hands,  the  morning  Post  crumpled  on 
the  floor  beside  him.  He  did  not  look  up  when  his  assistant 
entered  the  office;  his  response  to  her  " Good-morning"  was 
of  the  briefest.  Sharlee  understood.  It  was  only  the  corpo 
real  husk  of  her  friend  that  was  seated  at  the  desk.  All  the 
rest  of  him  was  down  at  Ephesus  fighting  with  the  beasts, 
and  grimly  resolved  to  give  no  sign  from  the  arena  till  he  had 
set  his  foot  upon  their  necks  for  the  glory  of  God  and  the 
honor  of  his  cloth. 

Sharlee  herself  did  not  feel  conversational.  In  silence  she 
took  off  her  things,  and,  going  over  to  her  own  desk,  began 
opening  the  mail.  In  an  hour,  maybe  more,  maybe  less, 
the  Secretary  stood  at  her  side,  his  kind  face  calm  as  ever. 

"Well,"  he  said  quietly,  "how  do  you  explain  it?" 

Sharlee's  eyes  offered  him  bay-leaves  for  his  victory. 

1  *  There  is  a  suggestion  about  it , "  said  she,  still  rather  white, 
"of  thirty  pieces  of  silver." 

"  Oh !  We  can  hardly  say  that.  Let  us  give  him  the  bene 
fit  of  the  doubt,  as  long  as  there  can  be  any  doubt.  Let  us 
view  it  for  the  present  as  a  death-bed  repentance." 

Him?  Which  did  he  mean? 

"  No,"  said  Sharlee,  "  it  is  not  possible  to  view  it  that  way. 
The  Post  has  been  as  familiar  with  the  arguments  all  along, 
from  beginning  to  end,  as  you  or  I.  It  could  not  be  hon 
estly  converted  any  more  than  you  could.  This,"  said  she, 
struggling  to  speak  calmly,  "is  treachery." 

"Appearances,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  are  much  that  way.  Still 
—  I  think  we  should  not  condemn  the  paper  unheard." 

"Then  why  not  have  the  hearing  at  once?  An  explana 
tion  is—" 

"I  shall  seek  none,"  interrupted  Mr.  Dayne,  quietly. 
"The  Post  must  volunteer  it,  if  it  has  any  to  offer.  Of 
course,"  he  went  on,  "we  know  nothing  of  the  history  of 
that  editorial  now.  Of  one  thing,  however,  I  feel  absolutely 
certain;  that  is,  that  it  was  published  without  the  know- 


348  QUEED 

ledge  of  Mr.  West.  Developments  may  follow.  ...  As  for 
instance  a  shake-up  in  the  staff." 

That  settled  it.  This  good  man  whom  she  admired  so  much 
had  not  entertained  a  doubt  that  the  editorial  was  from  the 
brain  and  pen  of  Mr.  Queed. 

She  said  painfully:  " As  to  the  effect  upon  the  —  the  re 
formatory —  " 

"  It  is  killed,"  said  Mr.  Dayne,  and  went  away  to  his  desk. 

Sharlee  turned  in  her  desk-chair  and  looked  out  of  the 
rain-blurred  windows. 

Through  and  beyond  the  trees  of  the  park,  over  ridges  of 
roofs  and  away  to  the  west  and  north,  she  saw  the  weather- 
beaten  Post  building,  its  distant  gray  tower  cutting  mistily 
out  of  the  dreary  sky.  From  where  she  sat  she  could  just 
pick  out,  as  she  had  so  often  noticed  before,  the  tops  of  the 
fifth-floor  row  of  windows,  the  windows  from  which  the  Post's 
editorial  department  looked  out  upon  a  world  with  which 
it  could  not  keep  faith.  Behind  one  of  those  windows  at 
this  moment,  in  all  likelihood,  sat  the  false  friend  who  ha$ 
cut  down  the  reformatory  from  behind. 

Which  was  it?  Oh,  was  not  Mr.  Dayne  right,  as  he  always 
was?  Where  was  there  any  room  for  doubt? 

Long  before  Sharlee  knew  Charles  Gardiner  West  per 
sonally,  when  she  was  a  little  girl  and  he  just  out  of  college, 
she  had  known  him  by  report  as  a  young  man  of  fine  ideals, 
exalted  character,  the  very  pattern  of  stainless  honor.  Her 
later  intimate  knowledge  of  him,  she  told  herself,  had  fully 
borne  out  the  common  reputation.  Wherever  she  had 
touched  him,  she  had  found  him  generous  and  sound  and 
sweet.  That  he  was  capable  of  what  seemed  to  her  the  bald 
est  and  basest  treachery  was  simply  unthinkable.  And  what 
reason  was  there  ever  to  drag  his  name  into  her  thought  of 
the  affair  at  all?  Was  it  not  Mr.  Queed  who  had  written  all 
the  reformatory  articles  since  Colonel  Cowles's  death  — 
Mr.  Queed  who  had  promised  only  twenty-four  hours  ago 
to  do  his  utmost  for  the  cause  at  the  critical  moment  to-day? 

And  yet  .  .  .  and  yet  .  .  .  her  mind  clung  desperately 


QUEED  349 

to  the  thought  that  possibly  the  assistant  editor  had  not 
done  this  thing,  after  all.  The  memory  of  his  visit  to  her,  less 
than  a  week  ago,  was  very  vivid  in  her  mind.  What  sort  of 
world  was  it  that  a  man  with  a  face  of  such  shining  honesty 
could  stoop  to  such  shabby  dishonesty?  —  that  a  man  who 
had  looked  at  her  as  he  had  looked  at  her  that  night,  could 
turn  again  and  strike  her  such  a  blow?  That  Queed  should 
have  done  this  seemed  as  inconceivable  as  that  West  should 
have  done  it.  There  was  the  wild  hundredth  chance  that 
neither  had  done  it,  that  the  article  had  been  written  by  some 
body  else  and  published  by  mistake. 

But  the  hope  hardly  fluttered  its  wings  before  her  reason 
struck  it  dead.  No,  there  was  no  way  out  there.  The  fact 
was  too  plain  that  one  of  her  two  good  friends,  under  what 
pressure  she  could  not  guess,  had  consented  to  commit  dis 
honor  and,  by  the  same  stroke,  to  wound  her  so  deeply.  |For 
no  honest  explanation  was  possible ;  there  was  no  argument 
in  the  case  to-day  that  was  not  equally  potent  a  month  ago. 
It  was  all  a  story  of  cajolery  or  intimidation  from  the  for 
midable  opposition,  and  of  mean  yielding  in  the  places  of  re 
sponsibility.  And  —  yes  —  She  felt  it  as  bad  for  one  of  her 
two  friends  to  be  so  stained  as  another.  It  had  come  to  that. 
At  last  she  must  admit  that  they  stood  upon  level  ground  in 
her  imagination,  the  nameless  little  Doctor  of  two  years  back 
side  by  side  with  the  beau  ideal  of  all  her  girlhood.  One's 
honor  was  as  dear  to  her  as  another's;  one's  friendship  as 
sweet;  and  now  one  of  them  was  her  friend  no  more. 

And  it  was  not  West  whom  she  must  cast  out.  There  was 
no  peg  anywhere  to  hang  even  the  smallest  suspicion  of 
him  upon.  She  scourged  her  mind  for  seeking  one.  It  was 
Queed  who,  at  the  pinch,  had  broken  down  and  betrayed 
them  with  a  kiss:  Queed,  of  the  obscure  parentage,  dubious 
inheritance,  and  omitted  upbringing;  Queed,  whom  she  had 
first  stood  upon  his  feet  and  started  forward  in  a  world  of 
men,  had  helped  and  counseled  and  guided,  had  admitted  to 
her  acquaintance,  her  friendship  —  for  this. 

But  because  Sharlee  had  known  Queed  well  as  a  man  who 


350  QUEED 

loved  truth,  because  the  very  thing  that  she  had  seen  and 
most  admired  in  him  from  the  beginning  was  an  unflinch 
ing  honesty  of  intellect  and  character,  because  of  the  re 
membrance  of  his  face  as  she  had  last  seen  it :  a  tiny  corner 
of  her  mind,  in  defiance  of  all  reason,  revolted  against  this 
condemnation  and  refused  to  shut  tight  against  him.  All 
morning  she  sat  at  her  work,  torn  by  anxiety,  hoping  every 
moment  that  her  telephone  might  ring  with  some  unthought- 
of  explanation,  which  would  leave  her  with  nothing  worse 
upon  her  mind  than  the  dead  reformatory.  But  though  the 
telephone  rang  often,  it  was  never  for  this. 

Sitting  in  a  corner  of  the  House  gallery,  about  noon,  Mr. 
Dayne  saw  the  reformatory  bill,  which  he  himself  had  writ 
ten,  called  up  out  of  order  and  snowed  under.  The  only 
speech  was  made  by  the  Solon  who  had  the  bill  called  up,  a 
familiar  organization  wheelhorse,  named  MeachyT.  Bangor, 
who  quoted  with  unconcealed  triumph  from  the  morning's 
Post,  wholly  ignoring  all  the  careful  safeguards  and  tearing 
out  of  the  context  only  such  portions  as  suited  his  humor  and 
his  need.  Mr.  Bangor  pointed  out  that,  inasmuch  as  the  "ac 
knowledged  organ"  of  the  State  Department  of  Charities 
now  at  length  "confessed"  that  the  reformatory  had  better 
wait  two  years,  there  were  no  longer  two  sides  to  the  ques 
tion.  Many  of  the  gentleman's  hearers  appeared  to  agree 
with  him.  They  rose  and  fell  upon  the  bill,  and  massacred  it 
by  a  vote  of  54  to  32. 

From  "Sis"  Hopkins,  legislative  reporter  of  the  Post,  the 
news  went  skipping  over  the  telephone  wire  to  the  editorial 
rooms,  where  the  assistant  editor,  who  received  it,  remarked 
that  he  was  sorry  to  hear  it.  That  done,  the  assistant  hung 
up  the  receiver,  and  resumed  work  upon  an  article  entitled 
"A  Constitution  for  Turkey?"  He  had  hardly  added  a  sen 
tence  to  this  composition  before  West  came  in  and,  with  a 
cheery  word  of  greeting,  passed  into  his  own  office. 

The  assistant  editor  went  on  with  his  writing.  He  looked 
worn  this  morning,  Henry  Surface's  son,  and  not  without 


QUEED  351 

reason.  Half  the  night  he  had  shared  the  nurse's  vigil  at  the 
bedside  of  Surface,  who  lay  in  unbroken  stupor.  Half  the 
night  he  had  maintained  an  individual  vigil  in  his  own  room, 
lying  flat  on  his  back  and  staring  wide-eyed  into  the  dark 
ness.  And  on  the  heels  of  the  day,  there  had  come  new 
trouble  for  him,  real  trouble,  though  in  the  general  cata 
clysm  its  full  bearings  and  farther  reaches  did  not  at  once 
come  home  to  him.  Running  professionally  through  the 
Post  at  breakfast-time,  his  eye,  like  Miss  Weyland's,  had 
been  suddenly  riveted  by  that  paper's  remarks  upon  the 
reformatory.  .  .  .  What  was  the  meaning  of  the  staggering 
performance  he  had  no  idea,  and  need  not  inquire.  Its  im 
mediate  effect  upon  his  own  career  was  at  least  too  plain  for 
argument.  His  editorship  and  his  reformatory  had  gone 
down  together. 

Yet  he  was  in  no  hurry  now  about  following  West  into  his 
sanctum.  Of  all  things  Queed,  as  people  called  him,  de 
spised  heroics  and  abhorred  a  "  scene."  Nothing  could  be 
gained  by  a  quarrel  now ;  very  earnestly  he  desired  the  inter 
view  to  be  as  matter-of-fact  as  possible.  In  half  an  hour, 
when  he  had  come  to  a  convenient  stopping-place,  he  opened 
the  door  and  stood  uncomfortably  before  the  young  man  he 
had  so  long  admired. 

West,  sitting  behind  his  long  table,  skimming  busily 
through  the  paper  with  blue  pencil  and  scissors,  looked  up 
with  his  agreeable  smile. 

"Well!  What  do  you  see  that  looks  likely  for  —  What's 
the  matter?  Are  you  sick  to-day?" 

"No,  I  am  quite  well,  thank  you.  I  find  very  little  in  the 
news,  though.  You  notice  that  a  digest  of  the  railroad  bill  is 
given  out?" 

"Yes.  You  don't  look  a  bit  well,  old  fellow.  You  must 
take  a  holiday  after  the  legislature  goes.  Yes,  I  'm  going  to 
take  the  hide  off  that  bill.  Or  better  yet  —  you.  Don't  you 
feel  like  shooting  off  some  big  guns  at  it?" 

"Certainly,  if  you  want  me  to.  There  is  the  farmers'  con 
vention,  too.  And  by  the  way,  I  'd  like  to  leave  as  soon  as 
you  can  fill  my  place." 


352  QUEED 

West  dropped  scissors,  pencil,  and  paper  and  stared  at  him 
with  dismayed  amazement.  "Leave!  Why,  you  are  never 
thinking  of  leaving  me!" 

"Yes.  I'd  —  like  to  leave.  I  thought  I  ought  to  tell  you 
this  morning,  so  that  you  can  at  once  make  your  plans  as  to 
my  successor." 

"But  my  dear  fellow !  I  can't  let  you  leave  me !  You 've  no 
idea  how  I  value  your  assistance,  how  I  've  come  to  lean  and 
depend  upon  you  at  every  point.  I  never  dreamed  you  were 
thinking  of  this.  What 's  the  matter?  What  have  you  got  on 
your  mind?" 

"I  think, "said  Queed,  unhappily,  "that  I  should  be  bet 
ter  satisfied  off  the  paper  than  on  it." 

"Why,  confound  you  —  it's  the  money!"  said  West,  with 
a  sudden  relieved  laugh.  "Why  did  n't  you  tell  me,  old  fel 
low?  You're  worth  five  times  what  they're  paying  you  — 
five  times  as  much  as  I  am  for  that  matter  —  and  I  can 
make  the  directors  see  it.  Trust  me  to  make  them  raise  you 
to  my  salary  at  the  next  meeting." 

"Thank  you  —  but  no,  my  salary  is  quite  satisfactory." 

West  frowned  off  into  space,  looking  utterly  bewildered. 
"Of  course,"  he  said  in  a  troubled  voice,  "you  have  a  per 
fect  right  to  resign  without  saying  a  word.  I  have  n't  the 
smallest  right  to  press  you  for  an  explanation  against  your 
will.  But  —  good  Lord !  Here  we  've  worked  together  side 
by  side,  day  after  day,  for  nearly  a  year,  pretty  good 
friends,  as  I  thought,  and  —  well,  it  hurts  a  little  to  have 
you  put  on  your  hat  and  walk  out  without  a  word.  I  wish 
you  would  tell  me  what 's  wrong.  There 's  nothing  I  would  n't 
do,  if  I  could,  to  fix  it  and  keep  you." 

The  eyes  of  the  two  men  met  across  the  table,  and  it  was 
Queed's  that  faltered  and  fell. 

"Well,"  he  said,  obviously  embarrassed,  "I  find  that  I  am 
out  of  sympathy  with  the  policy  of  the  paper." 

"Oh-h-ho!"  said  West,  slowly  and  dubiously.  "Do  you 
mean  my  article  on  the  reformatory?" 

"Yes  — I  do." 


QUEED  353 

"Why,  my  dear  fellow!" 

West  paused,  his  handsome  eyes  clouded,  considering  how 
best  he  might  put  the  matter  to  overcome  most  surely  the 
singular  scruples  of  his  assistant. 

" Let's  take  it  this  way,  old  fellow.  Suppose  that  my 
standpoint  in  that  article  was  diametrically  wrong.  I  am 
sure  I  could  convince  you  that  it  was  not,  but  admit,  for 
argument's  sake,  that  it  was.  Do  you  feel  that  the  appear 
ance  in  the  paper  of  an  article  with  which  you  don't  agree 
makes  it  necessary  for  you,  in  honor,  to  resign?" 

"No,  certainly  not — " 

"Is  it  that  you  don't  like  my  turning  down  one  of  your 
articles  and  printing  one  of  my  own  instead?  I  did  n't  know 
you  objected  to  that,  old  fellow.  You  see  —  while  your 
judgment  is  probably  a  hanged  sight  better  than  mine, 
after  all  I  am  the  man  who  is  held  responsible,  and  I  am  paid 
a  salary  to  see  that  my  opinions  become  the  opinions  of  the 
Post." 

"It  is  entirely  right  that  your  opinions  — " 

"Then  wherein  have  I  offended?  Be  frank  with  me,  like  a 
good  fellow,  I  beg  you!" 

Queed  eyed  him  strangely.  Was  the  editor's  inner  vision 
really  so  curiously  astigmatic? 

"  I  look  at  it  this  way,"  he  said,  in  a  slow,  controlled  voice. 
"The  Post  has  said  again  and  again  that  this  legislature  must 
establish  a  reformatory.  That  was  the  burden  of  a  long 
series  of  editorials,  running  back  over  a  year,  which,  as  I 
thought,  had  your  entire  approval.  Now,  at  the  critical  mo 
ment,  when  it  was  only  necessary  to  say  once  more  what  had 
been  said  a  hundred  times  before,  the  Post  suddenly  turns 
about  and,  in  effect,  authorizes  this  legislature  not  to  estab 
lish  the  reformatory.  The  House  killed  the  bill  just  now. 
Bangor  quoted  from  the  Post  editorial.  There  can  be  no 
doubt,  of  course,  that  it  turned  a  number  of  votes  —  enough 
to  have  safely  carried  the  bill." 

West  looked  disturbed  and  unhappy. 

"But  if  we  find  out  that  this  legislature  is  so  drained  by 


354  QUEED 

inescapable  expenses  that  it  simply  cannot  provide  the 
money?  Suppose  the  State  had  been  swept  by  a  plague? 
Suppose  there  was  a  war  and  a  million  of  unexpected  ex 
penses  had  suddenly  dropped  on  us  from  the  clouds? 
Would  n't  you  agree  that  circumstances  altered  cases,  and 
that,  under  such  circumstances,  everything  that  was  not 
indispensable  to  the  State's  existence  would  have  to  go 
over?" 

Queed  felt  like  answering  West's  pepper-fire  of  casuistry 
by  throwing  Eva  Bernheimer  at  his  head.  Despite  his  de 
termination  to  avoid  a  "scene,"  he  felt  his  bottled-up  indig 
nation  rising.  A  light  showed  in  his  stone-gray  eyes. 

"Can't  you  really  see  that  these  circumstances  are  not  in 
the  least  like  those?  Did  you  do  me  the  courtesy  to  read 
what  I  wrote  about  this  so-called  *  economy  argument '  last 
night?" 

"Certainly,"  said  West,  surprised  by  the  other's  tone. 
"But  clever  as  it  was,  it  was  not  based,  in  my  opinion,  on  a 
clear  understanding  of  the  facts  as  they  actually  exist.  You 
and  I  stay  so  close  inside  of  four  walls  here  that  we  are  apt 
to  get  out  of  touch  with  practical  conditions.  Yesterday,  I 
was  fortunate  enough  to  get  new  facts,  from  a  confidential 
and  highly  authoritative  source.  In  the  light  of  these  —  I 
wish  I  could  explain  them  more  fully  to  you,  but  I  was 
pledged  to  secrecy  —  I  am  obliged  to  tell  you  that  what  you 
had  written  seemed  to  me  altogether  out  of  focus,  unfair,  and 
extreme." 

"Did  you  get  these  facts,  as  you  call  them,  from  Plonny 
Neal?" 

"As  to  that,  I  am  at  liberty  to  say  nothing." 

Queed,  looking  at  him,  saw  that  he  had.  He  began  to  feel 
sorry  for  West. 

"I  would  give  four  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,"  he  said 
slowly  —  "all  the  money  that  I  happen  to  have  —  if  you 
had  told  me  last  night  that  you  meant  to  do  this." 

"  I  am  awfully  sorry,"  said  West,  with  a  touch  of  dignity, 
"that  you  take  it  so  hard.  But  I  assure  you  — " 


QUEED  355 

"  I  know  Plonny  Neal  even  better  than  you  do,"  continued 
Queed,  "for  I  have  known  him  as  his  social  equal.  He  is 
laughing  at  you  to-day." 

West,  of  course,  knew  better  than  that.  The  remark  con 
firmed  his  belief  that  Queed  had  brooded  over  the  reforma 
tory  till  he  saw  everything  about  it  distorted  and  magnified. 

"Well,  old  fellow,"  he  said,  without  a  trace  of  ill-humor  in 
his  voice  or  his  manner,  "then  it  is  I  he  is  laughing  at  —  not 
you.  That  brings  us  right  back  to  my  point.  If  you  feel,  as 
I  understand  it,  that  the  Post  is  in  the  position  of  having 
deserted  its  own  cause,  I  alone  am  the  deserter.  Don't  you 
see  that?  Not  only  am  I  the  editor  of  the  paper,  and  so 
responsible  for  all  that  it  says ;  but  I  wrote  the  article,  on  my 
own  best  information  and  judgment.  Whatever  conse 
quences  there  are,"  said  West,  his  thoughts  on  the  conse 
quences  most  likely  to  accrue  to  the  saviour  of  the  party,  "  I 
assume  them  all." 

"A  few  people,"  said  Queed,  slowly,  "know  that  I  have 
been  conducting  this  fight  for  the  Post.  They  may  not  un 
derstand  that  I  was  suddenly  superseded  this  morning.  But 
of  course  it  is  n't  that.  It  is  simply  a  matter  — " 

"Believe  me,  it  can  all  be  made  right.  I  shall  take  the 
greatest  pleasure  in  explaining  to  your  friends  that  I  alone 
am  responsible.  I  shall  call  to-day  —  right  now  —  at  — " 

"I'm  sorry,"  said  Queed,  abruptly,  "but  it  is  entirely 
impossible  for  me  to  remain." 

West  looked,  and  felt,  genuinely  distressed.  "I  wish,"  he 
said,  "the  old  reformatory  had  never  been  born";  and  he 
went  on  in  a  resigned  voice :  "  Of  course  I  can't  keep  you  with 
a  padlock  and  chain,  but  —  for  the  life  of  me,  I  can't  catch 
your  point  of  view.  To  my  mind  it  appears  the  honorable 
and  courageous  thing  to  correct  ,a  mistake,  even  at  the  last 
moment,  rather  than  stand  by  it  for  appearance's  sake." 

"You  see  I  don't  regard  our  principles  as  a  mistake." 

But  he  went  back  to  his  office  marveling  at  himself  for 
the  ease  with  which  West  had  put  him  in  the  wrong. 

For  friendship's  sake,  West  had  meant  to  call  at  the  Chari- 


356  QUEED 

ties  Department  that  day,  and  explain  to  his  two  friends 
there  how  his  sense  of  responsibility  to  the  larger  good  had 
made  it  necessary  for  him  to  inflict  a  momentary  disap 
pointment  upon  them.  But  this  disturbing  interview  with 
his  assistant  left  him  not  so  sure  that  an  immediate  call 
would  be  desirable,  after  all.  At  the  moment,  both  Dayne 
and  the  dearest  girl  in  the  world  would  naturally  be  feeling 
vexed  over  the  failure  of  their  plan ;  would  n't  it  be  the  sen 
sible  and  considerate  thing  to  give  them  a  little  time  to  con 
quer  their  pique  and  compose  themselves  to  see  facts  as  they 
were? 

The  Chronicle  that  afternoon  finally  convinced  him  that 
this  would  be  the  considerate  thing.  That  offensive  little  busy 
body,  which  pretended  to  have  been  a  champion  of  "this 
people's  institution"  came  out  with  a  nasty  editorial,  en 
titled  "The  Post's  Latest  Flop."  "Flop"  appeared  to  be  an 
intensely  popular  word  in  the  Chronicle  office.  The  article 
boldly  taxed  "our  more  or  less  esteemed  contemporary  "  with 
the  murder  of  the  reformatory,  and  showed  unpleasant  free 
dom  in  employing  such  phrases  as  "  instantaneous  conver 
sion,"  "treacherous  friendship,"  "disgusting  somersault 
ing,"  and  the  like.  Next  day,  grown  still  more  audacious,  it 
had  the  hardihood  to  refer  to  the  Post  as  "The  Plonny  Neal 
organ." 

Now,  of  course,  the  reformatory  had  not  been  in  any  sense 
a  burning  public  "issue."  Measures  like  this,  being  solid  and 
really  important,  seldom  interest  the  people.  There  was  not 
the  smallest  popular  excitement  over  the  legislature's  con 
duct,  or  the  Post's.  The  Chronicle's  venomous  remarks  were 
dismissed  as  the  usual  "newspaper  scrap."  All  this  West 
understood  perfectly.  Still,  it  was  plain  that  a  few  enthusi 
asts,  reformatory  fanatics,  were  taking  the  first  flush  of  dis 
appointment  rather  hard.  For  himself,  West  reflected,  he 
cared  nothing  about  their  clamor.  Conscious  of  having  per 
formed  an  unparalleled  service  to  his  party,  and  thus  to  his 
State,  he  was  willing  to  stand  for  a  time  the  indignation  of 
the  ignorant,  the  obloquy  of  the  malicious,  even  revolt  and 


QUEED  357 

disloyalty  among  his  own  lieutenants.  One  day  the  truth 
about  his  disinterested  patriotism  would  become  known.  For 
the  present  he  would  sit  silent,  calmly  waiting  at  least  until 
unjust  resentment  subsided  and  reason  reasserted  her  sway. 

Many  days  passed,  as  it  happened,  before  West  and  the 
Secretary  of  Charities  met;  six  days  before  West  and  the 
Assistant  Secretary  met.  On  the  sixth  night,  about  half- 
past  seven  in  the  evening,  he  came  unexpectedly  face  to  face 
with  Sharlee  Weyland  in  the  vestibule  of  Mrs.  Byrd,  Senior's, 
handsome  house.  In  the  days  intervening,  Sharlee's  state 
of  mind  had  remained  very  much  where  it  was  on  the  first 
morning:  only  now  the  tiny  open  corner  of  her  mind  had 
shrunk  to  imperceptible  dimensions.  Of  West  she  enter 
tained  not  the  smallest  doubt ;  and  she  greeted  him  like  the 
excellent  friend  she  knew  him  to  be. 

There  was  a  little  dinner-dance  at  Mrs.  Byrd's,  for  the 
season's  debutantes.  It  became  remembered  as  one  of  the 
most  charming  of  all  her  charming  parties.  To  the  buds 
were  added  a  sprinkling  of  older  girls  who  had  survived  as 
the  fittest,  while  among  the  swains  a  splendid  catholicity 
as  to  age  prevailed.  A  retinue  of  imported  men,  Caucasian 
at  that,  served  dinner  at  six  small  tables,  six  at  a  table;  the 
viands  were  fashioned  to  tickle  tired  epicures;  there  was 
vintage  champagne  such  as  kings  quaff  to  pledge  the  com 
ity  of  nations;  Wissner's  little  band  of  artists,  known  to 
command  its  own  price,  divinely  mingled  melody  with  the 
rose-sweetness  of  the  air.  West,  having  dined  beautifully, 
and  lingered  over  coffee  in  the  smoking-room  among  the 
last,  emerged  to  find  the  polished  floors  crowded  with  an 
influx  of  new  guests,  come  to  enliven  the  dance.  His  was,  as 
ever,  a  Roman  progress ;  he  stopped  and  was  stopped  every 
where;  like  a  happy  opportunist,  he  plucked  the  flowers 
as  they  came  under  his  hand,  and  gayly  whirled  from  one 
measure  to  another.  So  the  glorious  evening  was  half  spent 
before,  in  an  intermission,  he  found  himself  facing  Sharlee 
Weyland,  who  was  uncommonly  well  attended,  imploring 
her  hand  for  the  approaching  waltz. 


358  QUEED 

Without  the  smallest  hesitation,  Sharlee  drew  her  orna 
mental  pencil  through  the  next  name  on  her  list,  and  ordered 
her  flowers  and  fan  transferred  from  the  hands  of  Mr. 
Beverley  Byrd  to  those  of  Mr.  Charles  Gardiner  West. 

"Only,"  said  she,  thinking  of  her  partners,  "you'll  have 
to  hide  me  somewhere." 

With  a  masterful  grace  which  others  imitated,  indeed,  but 
could  not  copy,  West  extricated  his  lady  from  her  gallants, 
and  led  her  away  to  a  pretty  haven;  not  indeed,  to  a  con 
servatory,  since  there  was  none,  but  to  a  bewitching  nook 
under  the  wide  stairway,  all  banked  about  with  palm  and 
fern  and  pretty  flowering  shrub.  There  they  sat  them  down, 
unseeing  and  unseen,  near  yet  utterly  remote,  while  in  the 
blood  of  West  beat  the  intoxicating  strains  of  Straus,  not  to 
mention  the  vintage  champagne,  to  which  he  had  taken  a 
very  particular  fancy. 

All  night,  while  the  roses  heard  the  flute,  violin,  bassoon, 
none  in  all  the  gay  company  had  been  gayer  than  Sharlee. 
Past  many  heads  in  the  dining-room,  West  had  watched  her, 
laughing,  radiant,  sparkling  as  the  wine  itself,  a  pretty  little 
lady  of  a  joyous  sweetness  that  never  knew  a  care.  In  the 
dance,  for  he  had  watched  her  there,  too,  wondering,  as  she 
circled  laughing  by,  whether  she  felt  any  lingering  traces  of 
pique  with  him,  she  had  been  the  same:  no  girl  ever  wore  a 
merrier  heart.  But  a  sudden  change  came  now.  In  the 
friendly  freedom  of  the  green-banked  alcove,  Sharlee's 
gayety  dropped  from  her  like  a  painted  mask,  which,  having 
amused  the  children,  has  done  its  full  part.  Against  the 
back  of  the  cushioned  settle  where  they  sat  she  leaned  a 
weary  head,  and  frankly  let  her  fringed  lids  droop. 

At  another  time  West  might  have  been  pleased  by  such 
candid  evidences  of  confidence  and  intimacy,  but  not  to 
night.  He  felt  that  Sharlee,  having  advertised  a  delightful 
gayety  by  her  manner,  should  now  proceed  to  deliver  it :  it 
certainly  was  not  for  tired  sweetness  and  disconcerting 
silences  that  he  had  sought  this  tete-ct-tete.  But  at  last 
his  failure  to  arouse  her  on  indifferent  topics  became  too 


QUEED  359 

marked  to  be  passed  over;  and  then  he  said  in  a  gentle 
voice :  — 

"  Confess,  Miss  Weyland.  You  're  as  tired  as  you  can  be." 

She  turned  her  head,  and  smiled  a  little  into  his  eyes. 
"Yes  —  you  don't  mind,  do  you?" 

''Indeed  I  do,  though!  You're  going  altogether  too  hard 
—  working  like  a  Trojan  all  day  and  dancing  like  a  dryad 
all  night.  You'll  break  yourself  down  —  indeed  you  will!" 

Hardly  conscious  of  it  herself,  Sharlee  had  been  waiting 
with  a  tense  anxiety  of  which  her  face  began  to  give  signs, 
for  him  to  speak.  And  now  she  understood  that  he  would  not 
speak;  and  she  knew  why.  .  .  .  How  her  heart  warmed  to 
him  for  his  honorable  silence  in  defense  of  his  unworthy 
friend. 

But  she  herself  was  under  no  such  restraint.  "It  is  n't 
that,"  she  said  quickly.  "It's  the  reformatory  —  I've 
worried  myself  sick  over  it." 

West  averted  his  gaze ;  he  saw  that  it  had  come,  and  in  a 
peculiarly  aggravated  form.  He  recognized  at  once  how  im 
possible  it  would  be  to  talk  the  matter  over,  in  a  calm  and 
rational  way,  under  such  conditions  as  these.  This  little  girl 
had  brooded  over  it  till  the  incident  had  assumed  grotesque 
and  fantastic  proportions  in  her  mind.  She  was  seeing 
visions,  having  nightmares.  In  a  soothing,  sympathetic 
voice,  he  began  consoling  her  with  the  thought  that  a  post 
ponement  for  two  brief  years  was  really  not  so  serious, 
and  that  — 

"It  isn't  that!"  she  corrected  him  again,  in  the  same 
voice.  "That  was  pretty  bad,  but  —  what  I  have  minded  so 
much  was  M was  the  Post's  desertion." 

West's  troubled  eyes  fell.  But  some  hovering  imp  of 
darkness  instantly  popped  it  into  his  head  to  ask:  "Have 
you  seen  Queed?" 

"No,"  said  Sharlee,  colorlessly.    "Not  since  —  " 

"You  —  did  n't  know,  then,  that  he  has  left  the  Post?" 

"Left  the  Post!"  she  echoed,  with  a  face  suddenly  rigid. 
"No!  Did  he?  Won't  you  tell  me —?" 


360  QUEED 

West  looked  unhappily  at  the  floor.  "Well  —  I'd  much 
rather  not  go  into  this  now.  But  the  fact  is  that  he  left 
because  .  .  .  well,  we  had  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to  that 
reformatory  article." 

Sharlee  turned  hastily  away,  pretending  to  look  for  her 
fan.  The  sudden  shutting  of  that  tiny  door  had  shot  her 
through  with  unexpected  pain.  The  last  doubt  fell  now;  all 
was  plain.  Mr.  Queed  had  been  discharged  for  writing  an 
article  which  outraged  his  chief's  sense  of  honor,  that 
knightly  young  chief  who  still  would  not  betray  him  by  a 
word.  The  little  door  clicked;  Sharlee  turned  the  key  upon 
it  and  threw  away  the  key.  And  then  she  turned  upon  West 
a  face  so  luminous  with  pure  trust  that  it  all  but  unsteadied 
him. 

To  do  West  justice,  it  was  not  until  his  words  had  started 
caroming  down  the  eternal  halls  of  time,  that  their  possible 
implication  dawned  upon  him.  His  vague  idea  had  been 
merely  to  give  a  non-committal  summary  of  the  situation  to 
ease  the  present  moment;  this  to  be  followed,  at  a  more 
suitable  time,  by  the  calm  and  rational  explanation  he  had 
always  intended.  But  the  magical  effect  of  his  chance 
words,  entirely  unexpected  by  him,  was  quite  too  delightful 
to  be  wiped  out.  To  erase  that  look  from  the  tired  little 
lady's  face  by  labored  exposition  and  tedious  statistic  would 
be  the  height  of  clumsy  unkindness.  She  had  been  unhappy; 
he  had  made  her  happy;  that  was  all  that  was  vital  just  now. 
At  a  later  time,  when  she  had  stopped  brooding  over  the 
thing  and  could  see  and  discuss  it  intelligently,  he  would 
take  her  quietly  and  straighten  the  whole  matter  out  for 
her. 

For  this  present,  there  was  a  look  in  her  eyes  which  made  a 
trip-hammer  of  his  heart.  Never  had  her  face  —  less  of  the 
mere  pretty  young  girl's  than  he  had  ever  seen  it,  somewhat 
worn  beneath  its  color,  a  little  wistful  under  her  smile  — 
seemed  to  him  so  immeasurably  sweet.  In  his  blood  Straus 
and  the  famous  Verzenay  plied  their  dizzying  vocations. 
Suddenly  he  leaned  forward,  seeing  nothing  but  two  wonder- 


QUEED  361 

ful  blue  eyes,  and  his  hand  fell  upon  hers,  with  a  grip  which 
claimed  her  out  of  all  the  world. 

"Sharlee — "  he  said  hoarsely.  "  Don't  you  know 
that  —  " 

But  he  was,  alas,  summarily  checked.  At  just  that  min 
ute,  outraged  partners  of  Miss  Wey land's  espied  and  de 
scended  upon  them  with  loud  reproachful  cries,  and  Charles 
Gardiner  West's  moment  of  superb  impetuosity  had  flow 
ered  in  nothing. 

At  a  little  earlier  hour  on  the  same  evening,  in  a  dining- 
room  a  mile  away,  eight  men  met  "without  political  signifi 
cance"  to  elect  a  new  set  of  officers  for  the  city.  A  bit  of 
red-tape  legislation  permitted  the  people  to  ratify  the  choices 
at  a  "primary, "  to  be  held  some  months  later;  but  the  elec 
tion  came  now.  Unanimously,  and  with  little  or  no  discus 
sion,  the  eight  men  elected  one  of  their  own  number,  Mr. 
Meachy  T.  Bangor  by  name,  to  the  office- of  Mayor  of  the 
City. 

One  of  them  then  referred  humorously  to  Mr.  Bangor  as 
just  the  sort  of  progressive  young  reformer  that  suited  him. 
Another  suggested,  more  seriously,  that  they  might  have  to 
allow  for  the  genuine  article  some  day.  Plonny  Neal,  who 
sat  at  the  head  of  the  table,  as  being  the  wisest  of  them,  said 
that  the  organization  certainly  must  expect  to  knuckle  to 
reform  some  day ;  perhaps  in  eight  years,  perhaps  in  twelve 
years,  perhaps  in  sixteen. 

"Got  your  young  feller  all  picked  out,  Plonny?"  queried 
the  Mayor  elect,  Mr.  Bangor,  with  a  wink  around  the  room. 

Plonny  denied  that  he  had  any  candidate.  Under  pressure, 
however,  he  admitted  having  his  eye  on  a  certain  youth,  a 
"dark  horse"  who  was  little  known  at  present,  but  who,  in 
his  humble  judgment,  was  a  coming  man.  Plonny  said  that 
this  man  was  very  young  just  now,  but  would  be  plenty  old 
enough  before  they  would  have  need  of  him. 

Mr.  Bangor  once  more  winked  at  the  six.  "Why,  Plonny, 
I  thought  you  were  rooting  for  Charles  Gardenia  West." 


362  QUEED 

"Then  there's  two  of  ye,"  said  Plonny,  dryly,  "he  being 
the  other  one." 

He  removed  his  unlighted  cigar,  and  spat  loudly  into  a 
tall  brass  cuspidor,  which  he  had  taken  the  precaution  to 
place  for  just  such  emergencies. 

"Meachy,"  said  Plonny,  slowly,  "  I  would  n't  give  the  job 
of  dog-catcher  to  a  man  you  could  n't  trust  to  stand  by  his 
friends." 


XXVIII 

How  Words  can  be  like  Blows,  and  Blue  Eyes  stab  deep;  how 
Queed  sits  by  a  Bedside  and  reviews  his  Life;  and  how  a 
Thought  leaps  at  him  and  will  not  down. 

IN  the  first  crushing  burst  of  revelation,  Queed  had  had  a 
wild  impulse  to  wash  his  hands  of  everything,  and  fly. 
He  would  pack  Surface  off  to  a  hospital ;  dispose  of  the 
house;  escape  back  to  Mrs.  Paynter's;  forget  his  terrible 
knowledge,  and  finally  bury  it  with  Surface.  His  reason  forti 
fied  the  impulse  at  every  point.  He  owed  less  than  nothing 
to  his  father ;  he  had  not  the  slightest  responsibility  either 
toward  him  or  for  him ;  to  acknowledge  the  relation  between 
them  would  do  no  conceivable  good  to  anybody.  He  would 
go  back  to  the  Scriptorium,  and  all  would  be  as  it  had  been 
before. 

But  when  the  moment  came  either  to  go  or  to  stay,  an 
other  and  deeper  impulse  rose  against  this  one,  and  beat  it 
down.  Within  him  a  voice  whispered  that  though  he  might 
go  back  to  the  Scriptorium,  he  would  never  be  as  he  had  been 
before.  Whether  he  acknowledged  the  relation  or  not,  it  was 
still  there.  And,  in  time,  his  reason  brought  forth  material  to 
fortify  this  impulse,  too :  it  came  out  in  brief,  grim  sentences 
which  burned  themselves  into  his  mind.  Surface  was  his 
.father.  To  deny  the  primal  blood-tie  was  not  honorable. 
The  sins  of  the  fathers  descended  to  the  children.  To  sup 
press  Truth  was  the  crowning  blasphemy. 

Queed  did  not  go.  He  stayed,  resolved,  after  a  violent 
struggle  —  it  was  all  over  in  the  first  hour  of  his  discovery  — 
to  bear  his  burden,  shouldering  everything  that  his  sonship 
involved. 

By  day  and  by  night  the  little  house  stood  very  quiet.  Its 
secret  remained  inviolate;  the  young  man  was  still  Mr. 


364  QUEED 

Queed,  the  old  one  still  Professor  Nicolovius,  who  had  suf 
fered  the  last  of  his  troublesome  "strokes."  Inside  the  dark 
ened  windows,  life  moved  on  silent  heels.  The  doctor  came, 
did  nothing,  and  went.  The  nurse  did  nothing  but  stayed. 
Queed  would  have  dismissed  her  at  once,  except  that  that 
would  have  been  bad  economy;  he  must  keep  his  own  more 
valuable  time  free  for  the  earning  of  every  possible  penny. 
To  run  the  house,  he  had,  for  the  present,  his  four  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars  in  bank,  saved  out  of  his  salary.  This, 
he  figured,  would  last  nine  weeks.  Possibly  Surface  would 
last  longer  than  that:  that  remained  to  be  seen. 

Late  on  a  March  afternoon,  Queed  finished  a  review  ar 
ticle  —  his  second  since  he  had  left  the  newspaper,  four  days 
before  —  and  took  it  himself  to  the  post-office.  He  wanted 
to  catch  the  night  mail  for  the  North ;  and  besides  his  body, 
jaded  by  two  days'  confinement,  cried  aloud  for  a  little  exer 
cise.  His  fervent  desire  was  to  rush  out  all  the  articles  that 
were  in  him,  and  get  money  for  them  back  with  all  possible 
speed.  But  he  knew  that  the  market  for  this  work  was  lim 
ited.  He  must  find  other  work  immediately;  he  did  not  care 
greatly  what  kind  it  was,  provided  only  that  it  was  profit 
able.  Thoughts  of  ways  and  means,  mostly  hard  thoughts, 
occupied  his  mind  all  the  way  downtown.  And  always  it 
grew  plainer  to  him  how  much  he  was  going  to  miss,  now  of 
all  times,  his  eighteen  hundred  a  year  from  the  Post. 

In  the  narrowest  corridor  of  the  post-office  —  like  West  in 
the  Byrds'  vestibule  —  he  came  suddenly  face  to  face  with 
Sharlee  Weyland. 

The  meeting  was  unwelcome  to  them  both,  and  both  theii 
faces  showed  it.  Sharlee  had  told  herself,  a  thousand  times 
in  a  week,  that  she  never  wanted  to  see  Mr.  Queed  again. 
Queed  had  known,  without  telling  himself  at  all,  that  he  did 
not  want  to  see  Miss  Weyland,  not,  at  least,  till  he  had  more 
time  to  think.  But  Queed 's  dread  of  seeing  the  girl  had 
nothing  to  do  with  what  was  uppermost  in  her  mind  —  the 
Post's  treacherous  editorial.  Of  course,  West  had  long  since 
made  that  right  as  he  had  promised,  as  he  would  have  done 


QUEED  365 

with  no  promising.  But  —  ought  he  to  tell  her  now,  or  to 
wait?  .  .  .  And  what  would  she  say  when  she  knew  the 
whole  shameful  truth  about  him  —  knew  that  for  nearly 
a  year  Surface  Senior  and  Surface  Junior,  shifty  father  and 
hoodwinked  son,  had  been  living  fatly  on  the  salvage  of  her 
own  plundered  fortune? 

She  would  have  passed  him  with  a  bow,  but  Queed,  more 
awkward  than  she,  involuntarily  halted.  The  dingy  gas 
light,  which  happened  to  be  behind  him,  fell  full  upon  her 
face,  and  he  said  at  once :  — 

"  How  do  you  do?  —  not  very  well,  I  fear.  You  look  quite 
used  up  —  not  well  at  all." 

Pride  raised  a  red  flag  in  her  cheek.  She  lifted  a  great 
muff  to  her  lips,  and  gave  a  little  laugh. 

"Thank  you.   I  am  quite  well." 

Continuing  to  gaze  at  her,  he  went  ahead  with  customary 
directness:  "Then  I  am  afraid  you  have  been  taking  —  the 
reformatory  too  hard." 

"No,  not  the  reformatory.  It  is  something  worse  than 
that.  I  had  a  friend  once,"  said  Sharlee,  muff  to  her  lips, 
and  her  level  eyes  upon  him,  "and  he  was  not  worthy." 

To  follow  out  that  thought  was  impossible,  but  Queed  felt 
very  sorry  for  West  when  he  saw  how  she  said  it. 

"I  'm  sorry  that  you  should  have  had  this  —  to  distress 
you.  However — " 

"Is n't  it  rather  late  to  think  of  that  now?  As  to  saying 
it  —  I  should  have  thought  that  you  would  tell  me  of  your 
sorrow  immediately  —  or  not  at  all." 

^A  long  look  passed  between  them.  Down  the  corridor,  on 
both  sides  of  them,  flowed  a  stream  of  people  bent  upon 
mails;  but  these  two  were  alone  in  the  world. 

"Have  you  seen  West?"  asked  Queed,  in  a  voice  unlike 
his  own. 

She  made  a  little  movement  of  irrepressible  distaste. 

"Yes.  .  .  .  But  you  must  not  think  that  he  told  me.  He 
is  too  kind,  too  honorable — to  betray  his  friend." 

He  stared  at  her,  reft  of  the  power  of  speech. 


366  QUEED 

From  under  the  wide  hat,  the  blue  eyes  seemed  to  leap  out 
and  stab  him;  they  lingered,  turning  the  knife,  while  their 
owner  appeared  to  be  waiting  for  him  to  speak;  and  then 
with  a  final  twist,  they  were  pulled  away,  and  Queed  found 
himself  alone  in  the  corridor. 

He  dropped  his  long  envelope  in  the  slot  labeled  North, 
and  turned  his  footsteps  toward  Duke  of  Gloucester  Street 
again. 

Within  him  understanding  had  broken  painfully  into  flame. 
Miss  Weyland  believed  that  he  was  the  author  of  the  unfor 
givable  editorial  —  he,  who  had  so  gladly  given,  first  the 
best  abilities  he  had,  and  then  his  position  itself,  to  the  cause 
of  Eva  Bernheimer.  West  had  seen  her,  and  either  through 
deliberate  falseness  or  his  characteristic  fondness  for  shying 
off  from  disagreeable  subjects  —  Queed  felt  pretty  sure  it 
was  the  latter  —  had  failed  to  reveal  the  truth.  West's 
motives  did  not  matter  in  the  least.  The  terrible  situation  in 
which  he  himself  had  been  placed  was  all  that  mattered,  and 
that  he  must  straighten  out  at  once.  What  dumbness  had 
seized  his  tongue  just  now  he  could  not  imagine.  But  it  was 
plain  that,  however  much  he  would  have  preferred  not  to  see 
the  girl  at  all,  this  meeting  had  made  another  one  immedi 
ately  necessary :  he  must  see  her  at  once,  to-night,  and  clear 
himself  wholly  of  this  cruel  suspicion.  And  yet  ...  he  could 
never  clear  himself  of  her  having  suspected  him;  he  under 
stood  that,  and  it  seemed  to  him  a  terrible  thing.  No  matter 
how  humble  her  contrition,  how  abject  her  apologies,  nothing 
could  ever  get  back  of  what  was  written,  or  change  the  fact 
that  she  had  believed  him  capable  of  that. 

The  young  man  pursued  his  thoughts  over  three  miles  of 
city  streets,  and  returned  to  the  house  of  Surface. 

The  hour  was  6.30.  He  took  the  nurse's  seat  by  the  bed 
side  of  his  father  and  sent  her  away  to  her  dinner. 

There  was  a  single  gas-light  in  the  sick-room,  turned  just 
high  enough  for  the  nurse  to  read  her  novels.  The  old  man 
lay  like  a  log,  though  breathing  heavily ;  under  the  flickering 
light,  his  face  looked  ghastly.  It  had  gone  all  to  pieces;  ad- 


QUEED  367 

vanced  old  age  had  taken  possession  of  it  in  a  night.  More 
over  the  truth  about  the  auburn  mustaches  and  goatee  was 
coming  out  in  snowy  splotches;  the  fading  dye  showed  a 
mottle  of  red  and  white  not  agreeable  to  the  eye.  Here  was 
not  merely  senility,  but  ignoble  and  repulsive  senility. 

His  father !  ...  his  father  !  O  God !  How  much  better  to 
have  sprung,  as  he  once  believed,  from  the  honest  loins  of 
Tim  Queed ! 

The  young  man  averted  his  eyes  from  the  detestable 
face  of  his  father,  and  let  his  thoughts  turn  inward  upon 
himself.  For  the  first  time  in  all  his  years,  he  found  himself 
able  to  trace  his  own  life  back  to  its  source,  as  other  men 
do.  A  flying  trip  to  New  York,  and  two  hours  with  Tim 
Queed,  had  answered  all  questions,  cleared  up  all  doubts. 
First  of  all,  it  had  satisfied  him  that  there  was  no  stain 
upon  his  birth.  Surface's  second  marriage  had  been  clan 
destine,  but  it  was  genuine;  in  Newark  the  young  man 
found  the  old  clergyman  who  had  officiated  at  the  ceremony. 
His  mother,  it  seemed,  had  been  Miss  Floretta  May  Earle, 
a  "  handsome  young  opery  singer,"  of  a  group,  so  Tim  said, 
to  which  the  gentleman,  his  father,  had  been  very  fond  of 
giving  his  "riskay  little  bacheldore  parties." 

Tim's  story,  in  fact,  was  comprehensive  at  all  points.  He 
had  been  Mr.  Surface's  coachman  and  favorite  servant  in 
the  heyday  of  the  Southern  apostate's  metropolitan  glories. 
About  a  year  before  the  final  catastrophe,  Surface's  affairs 
being  then  in  a  shaky  condition,  the  servants  had  been  dis 
missed,  the  handsome  house  sold,  and  the  financier,  in  a 
desperate  effort  to  save  himself,  had  moved  off  somewhere 
to  modest  quarters  in  a  side  street.  That  was  the  last  Tim 
heard  of  his  old  patron,  till  the  papers  printed  the  staggering 
news  of  his  arrest.  A  few  weeks  later,  Tim  one  day  received 
a  message  bidding  him  come  to  see  his  former  master  in  the 
Tombs. 

The  disgraced  capitalist's  trial  was  then  in  its  early  stages, 
but  he  entertained  not  the  smallest  hope  of  acquittal. 
Broken  and  embittered,  he  confided  to  his  faithful  servant 


368  QUEED 

that,  soon  after  the  break-up  of  his  establishment,  he  had 
quietly  married  a  wife ;  that  some  weeks  earlier  she  had  pre 
sented  him  with  a  son;  and  that  she  now  lay  at  the  point  of 
death  with  but  remote  chances  of  recovery.  To  supply  her 
with  money  was  impossible,  for  his  creditors,  he  said,  had 
not  only  swooped  down  like  buzzards  upon  the  remnant  of 
his  fortune,  but  were  now  watching  his  every  move  under 
the  suspicion  that  he  had  managed  to  keep  something  back. 
All  his  friends  had  deserted  him  as  though  he  were  a  leper, 
for  his  had  been  the  unpardonable  sin  of  being  found  out. 
In  all  the  world  there  was  no  equal  of  whom  he  was  not  too 
proud  to  ask  a  favor. 

In  short,  he  was  about  to  depart  for  a  long  sojourn  in 
prison,  leaving  behind  a  motherless,  friendless,  and  penniless 
infant  son.  Would  Tim  take  him  and  raise  him  as  his  own? 

While  Tim  hesitated  over  this  amazing  request,  Surface 
leaned  forward  and  whispered  a  few  words  in  his  ear.  He  had 
contrived  to  secrete  a  little  sum  of  money,  a  very  small  sum, 
but  one  which,  well  invested  as  it  was,  would  provide  just 
enough  for  the  boy's  keep.  Tim  was  to  receive  twenty-five 
dollars  monthly  for  his  trouble  and  expense ;  Surface  pledged 
his  honor  as  a  gentleman  that  he  would  find  a  way  to  smug 
gle  this  sum  to  him  on  the  first  of  every  month.  Tim,  being 
in  straits  at  the  time,  accepted  with  alacrity.  No,  he  could 
not  say  that  Mr.  Surface  had  exhibited  any  sorrow  over  the 
impending  decease  of  his  wife,  or  any  affectionate  interest  in 
his  son.  In  fact  the  ruined  man  seemed  to  regard  the  arrival 
of  the  little  stranger  —  "  the  brat,"  as  he  called  him  —  with 
peculiar  exasperation.  Tim  gathered  that  he  never  expected 
or  desired  to  see  his  son,  whatever  the  future  held,  and  that, 
having  arranged  for  food  and  shelter,  he  meant  to  wash  his 
hands  of  the  whole  transaction.  The  honest  guardian's  sole 
instructions  were  to  keep  mum  as  the  grave;  to  provide  the 
necessaries  of  life  as  long  as  the  boy  was  dependent  upon 
him ;  not  to  interfere  with  him  in  any  way ;  but  if  he  left, 
always  to  keep  an  eye  on  him,  and  stand  ready  to  produce 
him  on  demand.  To  these  things,  and  particularly  to  abso- 


QUEED  369 

lute  secrecy,  Tim  was  sworn  by  the  most  awful  of  oaths ;  and 
so  he  and  his  master  parted.  A  week  later  a  carriage  was 
driven  up  to  Tim's  residence  in  the  dead  of  the  night,  and  a 
small  bundle  of  caterwauling  humankind  was  transferred 
from  the  one  to  the  other.  Such  was  the  beginning  of  the 
life  of  young  Queed.  The  woman,  his  mother,  had  died  a  day 
or  two  before,  and  where  she  had  been  buried  Tim  had  no 
idea. 

So  the  years  passed,  while  the  Queeds  watched  with 
amazement  the  subtly  expanding  verification  of  the  adage 
that  blood  will  tell.  For  Mr.  Surface,  said  Tim,  had  been  a 
great  scholard,  and  used  to  sit  up  to  all  hours  reading  books 
that  Thomason,  the  butler,  could  n't  make  head  nor  tail  of; 
and  so  with  Surface's  boy.  He  was  the  strange  duckling 
among  chickens  who,  with  no  guidance,  straightway  plumed 
himself  for  the  seas  of  printed  knowledge.  Time  rolled  on. 
When  Surface  was  released  from  prison,  as  the  papers  an 
nounced,  there  occurred  not  the  smallest  change  in  the  status 
of  affairs ;  except  that  the  monthly  remittances  now  bore 
the  name  of  Nicolovius,  and  came  from  Chicago  or  some 
other  city  in  the  west.  More  years  passed ;  and  at  last,  one 
day,  after  a  lapse  of  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century,  the  unex 
pected  happened,  as  it  really  will  sometimes.  Tim  got  a 
letter  in  a  handwriting  he  knew  well,  instructing  him  to  call 
next  day  at  such-and-such  a  time  and  place. 

Tim  was  not  disobedient  to  the  summons.  He  called ;  and 
found,  instead  of  the  dashing  young  master  he  had  once 
known,  a  soft  and  savage  old  man  whom  he  at  first  utterly 
failed  to  recognize.  Surface  paced  the  floor  and  spoke  his 
mind.  It  seemed  that  an  irresistible  impulse  had  led  him 
back  to  his  old  home  city;  that  he  had  settled  and  taken 
work  there;  and  there  meant  to  end  his  days.  Under  these 
circumstances,  some  deep-hidden  instinct  —  a  whim,  the 
old  man  called  it  —  had  put  it  into  his  head  to  consider  the 
claiming  and  final  acknowledgment  of  his  son.  After  all  the 
Ishmaelitish  years  of  bitterness  and  wandering,  Surface's 
blood,  it  seemed,  yearned  for  his  blood.  But  under  no  cir- 


370  QUEED 

cumstances,  he  told  Tim,  would  he  acknowledge  his  son  be 
fore  his  death,  since  that  would  involve  the  surrender  of  his 
incognito;  and  not  even  then,  so  the  old  man  swore,  unless 
he  happened  to  be  pleased  with  the  youth  —  the  son  of  his 
body  whom  he  had  so  utterly  neglected  through  all  these 
years.  Therefore,  his  plan  was  to  have  the  boy  where  they 
would  meet  as  strangers ;  where  he  could  have  an  opportunity 
to  watch,  weigh,  and  come  to  know  him  in  the  most  casual 
way ;  and  thereafter  to  act  as  he  saw  fit. 

So  there,  in  the  shabby  lodging-house,  the  little  scheme 
was  hatched  out.  Surface  undertook  by  his  own  means  to 
draw  his  son,  as  the  magnet  the  particle  of  steel,  to  his  city. 
Tim,  to  whom  the  matter  was  sure  to  be  broached,  was  to 
encourage  the  young  man  to  go.  But  more  than  this:  it  was 
to  be  Tim's  diplomatic  task  to  steer  him  to  the  house  where 
Surface,  as  Nicolovius,  resided.  Surface  himself  had  sug 
gested  the  device  by  which  this  was  to  be  done ;  merely  that 
Tim,  mentioning  the  difficulties  of  the  boarding-house  ques 
tion  in  a  strange  city,  was  to  recall  that  through  the  lucky 
chance  of  having  a  cousin  in  this  particular  city,  he  knew  of 
just  the  place:  a  house  where  accommodations  were  of  the 
best,  particularly  for  those  who  liked  quiet  for  studious  work, 
and  prices  ridiculously  low.  The  little  stratagem  worked  ad 
mirably.  The  address  which  Tim  gave  young  Surface  was 
the  address  of  Mrs.  Paynter's,  where  Surface  Senior  had  lived 
for  nearly  three  years.  And  so  the  young  man  had  gone  to 
his  father,  straight  as  a  homing  pigeon. 

How  strange,  how  strange  to  look  back  on  all  this  now! 

Half  reclining  in  the  nurse's  chair,  unseeing  eyes  on  the 
shaded  and  shuttered  window,  for  the  fiftieth  time  Queed 
let  his  mind  go  back  over  his  days  at  Mrs.  Paynter's,  reading 
them  all  anew  in  the  light  of  his  staggering  knowledge.  With 
three  communications  of  the  most  fragmentary  sort,  his 
father  had  had  his  full  will  of  his  son.  With  six  typewritten 
lines,  he  had  drawn  the  young  man  to  his  side  at  his  own  good 
pleasure.  Boarding-house  gossip  made  it  known  that  the  son 
was  in  peril  of  ejectment  for  non-payment  of  board,  and 


QUEED  371 

a  twen ty- dollar  bill  had  been  promptly  transmitted — at 
some  risk  of  discovery  —  to  ease  his  stringency.  Last  came 
the  mysterious  counsel  to  make  friends  and  to  like  people, 
the  particular  friends  and  people  intended  being  consol 
idated,  he  could  understand  now,  in  the  person  of  old  Nicol- 
ovius.  And  that  message  out  of  the  unknown  had  had  its 
effect:  Queed  could  see  that  now,  at  any  rate.  His  father 
clearly  had  been  satisfied  with  the  result;  he  appeared  as 
his  father  no  more.  Thenceforward  he  stalked  his  prey  as 
Nicolovius — with  what  consummate  skill  and  success! 

Oh,  but  did  he  not  have  a  clever  father,  a  stealthy ,  cunning, 
merciless  father,  soft- winged,  foul-eyed,  hungry- taloned, 
flitting  noiselessly  in  circles,  that  grew  ever  and  ever  nar 
rower,  sure,  and  unfaltering  to  the  final  triumphant  swoop! 
Or  no —  Rather  a  coiled  and  quiescent  father,  horrible- 
eyed,  lying  in  slimy  rings  at  the  foot  of  the  tree,  basilisk  gaze 
fixed  upward,  while  the  enthralled  bird  fluttered  hopelessly 
down,  twig  by  twig,  ever  nearer  and  nearer. 

But  no  —  his  metaphors  were  very  bad ;  he  was  sentimen 
talizing,  rhetorizing,  a  thing  that  he  particularly  abhorred. 
Not  in  any  sense  was  he  the  pitiful  prey  of  his  father,  the 
hawk  or  the  snake.  Rather  was  he  glad  that,  after  long  doubt 
and  perplexity,  at  last  he  knew.  For  that  was  the  passion  of 
all  his  chaste  life:  to  know  the  truth  and  to  face  it  without 
fear. 

Surface  stirred  slightly  in  his  bed,  and  Queed,  turning  his 
eyes,  let  them  rest  briefly  on  that  repulsive  face.  His 
father!  .  .  .  And  he  must  wear  that  name  and  shoulder  that 
infamy  forevermore! 

The  nurse  came  back  and  relieved  him  of  his  vigil.  He 
descended  the  stairs  to  his  solitary  dinner.  And  as  he 
went,  and  while  he  lingered  over  food  which  he  did  not 
eat,  his  thoughts  withdrew  from  his  terrible  inheritance  to 
centre  anew  on  the  fact  that,  within  an  hour,  he  was  to  see 
Miss  Weyland  again. 

The  prospect  drew  him  while  it  even  more  strongly  repelled. 


372  QUEED 

For  a  week  he  had  hesitated,  unable  to  convince  himself 
that  he  was  justified  in  telling  Miss  Weyland  at  once  the 
whole  truth  about  himself,  his  father,  and  her  money.  There 
was  much  on  the  side  of  delay.  Surface  might  die  at  any 
moment,  and  this  would  relieve  his  son  from  the  smallest 
reproach  of  betraying  a  confidence :  the  old  man  himself  had 
said  that  everything  was  to  be  made  known  when  he  died. 
On  the  other  hand  Surface  might  get  well,  and  if  he  did,  he 
ought  to  be  given  a  final  chance  to  make  the  restitution  him 
self.  Besides  this,  there  was  the  great  uncertainty  about  the 
money.  Queed  had  no  idea  how  much  it  was,  or  where  it  was, 
or  whether  or  not,  upon  Surface's  death,  he  himself  was  to 
get  it  by  bequest.  But  all  through  these  doubts,  passionately 
protesting  against  them,  had  run  his  own  insistent  feeling 
that  it  was  not  right  to  conceal  the  truth,  even  under  such 
confused  conditions  —  not,  at  least,  from  the  one  person  who 
was  so  clearly  entitled  to  know  it.  This  feeling  had  reached 
a  climax  even  before  he  met  the  girl  this  afternoon.  Some 
how  that  meeting  had  served  to  precipitate  his  decision. 
After  all,  Surface  had  had  both  his  chance  and  his  warn 
ing. 

That  his  sonship  would  make  him  detestable  in  Miss 
Weyland 's  sight  was  highly  probable,  but  he  could  not  let 
the  fear  of  that  keep  him  silent.  His  determination  to  tell 
her  the  essential  facts  had  come  now,  at  last,  as  a  kind  of 
corollary  to  his  instant  necessity  of  straightening  out  the 
reformatory  situation.  This  latter  necessity  had  dominated 
his  thought  ever  since  the  chance  meeting  in  the  post-office. 
And  as  his  mind  explored  the  subject,  it  ramified,  and  grew 
more  complicated  and  oppressive  with  every  step  of  the 
way. 

It  gradually  became  plain  to  him  that,  in  clearing  himself 
of  responsibility  for  the  Post's  editorial,  he  would  have  to 
put  West  in  a  very  unpleasant  position.  He  would  have  to 
convict  him,  not  only  of  having  written  the  perfidious  article, 
but  of  having  left  another  man  under  the  reproach  of  having 
written  it.  But  no;  it  could  not  be  said  that  he  was  putting 


QUEED  373 

West  in  this  position.  West  had  put  himself  there.  It  was  he 
who  had  written  the  article,  and  it  was  he  who  had  kept  si 
lent  about  it.  Every  man  must  accept  the  responsibility  for 
his  own  acts,  or  the  world  would  soon  be  at  sixes  and  sevens. 
In  telling  Miss  Weyland  the  truth  about  the  matter,  as  far 
as  that  went,  he  would  be  putting  himself  in  an  unpleasant 
position.  Nobody  liked  to  see  one  man  "  telling  on  "  another. 
He  did  not  like  it  himself,  as  he  remembered,  for  instance,  in 
the  case  of  young  Brown  in  the  Blaines  College  hazing  affair. 

Queed  sat  alone  in  the  candle-lit  dining-room,  thinking 
things  out.  A  brilliant  idea  came  to  him.  He  would  tele 
phone  to  West,  explain  the  situation  to  him,  and  ask  him  to 
set  it  right  immediately.  West,  of  course,  would  do  so.  At 
the  worst,  he  had  only  temporized  with  the  issue  —  perhaps 
had  lost  sight  of  it  altogether — and  he  would  be  shocked  to 
learn  of  the  consequences  of  his  procrastination.  He  himself 
could  postpone  his  call  on  Miss  Weyland  till  to-morrow,  leav 
ing  West  to  go  to-night.  Of  course,  however,  nothing  his 
former  chief  could  do  now  would  change  the  fact  that  Miss 
Weyland  herself  had  doubted  him. 

Undoubtedly,  the  interview  would  be  a  painful  one  for 
West.  How  serious  an  offense  the  girl  considered  the  editorial 
had  been  plain  in  his  own  brief  conversation  with  her.  And 
West  would  have  to  acknowledge,  further,  that  he  had  kept 
quiet  about  it  for  a  week.  Miss  Weyland  would  forgive 
West,  of  course,  but  he  could  never  be  the  same  to  her  again. 
He  would  always  have  that  spot.  Queed  himself  felt  that 
way  about  it.  He  had  admired  West  more  than  any  man  he 
ever  knew,  more  even  than  Colonel  Cowles,  but  now  he  could 
never  think  very  much  of  him  again.  He  was  quite  sure  that 
Miss  Weyland  was  like  that,  too.  Thus  the  matter  began  to 
grow  very  serious.  For  old  Surface,  who  was  always  right 
about  people,  had  said  that  West  was  the  man  that  Miss 
Weyland  meant  to  marry. 

Very  gradually,  for  the  young  man  was  still  a  slow  analyst 
where  people  were  concerned,  an  irresistible  conclusion  was 
forced  upon  him. 


374  QUEED 

Miss  Weyland  would  rather  think  that  he  had  written  the 
editorial  than  to  know  that  West  had  written  it. 

The  thought,  when  he  finally  reached  it,  leapt  up  at  him, 
but  he  pushed  it  away.  However,  it  returned.  It  became 
like  one  of  those  swinging  logs  which  hunters  hang  in  trees 
to  catch  bears:  the  harder  he  pushed  it  away,  the  harder  it 
swung  back  at  him. 

He  fully  understood  the  persistence  of  this  idea.  It  was 
the  heart  and  soul  of  the  whole  question.  He  himself  was 
simply  Miss  Weyland 's  friend,  the  least  among  many.  If  be 
lief  in  his  dishonesty  had  brought  her  pain  —  and  he  had  her 
word  for  that  —  it  was  a  hurt  that  would  quickly  pass.  False 
friends  are  soon  forgotten.  But  to  West  belonged  the  shining 
pedestal  in  the  innermost  temple  of  her  heart.  It  would  go 
hard  with  the  little  lady  to  find  at  the  last  moment  this  stain 
upon  her  lover's  honor. 

He  had  only  to  sit  still  and  say  nothing  to  make  her  happy. 
That  was  plain.  So  the  whole  issue  was  shifted.  It  was  not, 
as  it  had  first  seemed,  merely  a  matter  between  West  and 
himself.  The  real  issue  was  between  Miss  Weyland  and  him 
self  —  between  her  happiness  and  his  .  .  .  no,  not  his  hap 
piness  —  his  self-respect,  his  sense  of  justice,  his  honor,  his 
chaste  passion  for  Truth,  his  ...  yes,  his  happiness. 

Did  he  think  most  of  Miss  Weyland  or  of  himself?  That 
was  what  it  all  came  down  to.  Here  was  the  new  demand 
that  his  acknowledgment  of  a  personal  life  was  making  upon 
him,  the  supreme  demand,  it  seemed,  that  any  man's  per 
sonal  life  could  ever  make  upon  him.  For  if,  on  the  day  when 
Nicolovius  had  suddenly  revealed  himself  as  Surface,  he  had 
been  asked  to  give  himself  bodily,  he  was  now  asked  to  give 
himself  spiritually  —  to  give  all  that  made  him  the  man  he 
was. 

From  the  stark  alternative,  once  raised,  there  was  no 
escape.  Queed  closed  with  it,  and  together  they  went  down 
into  deep  waters. 


XXIX 

In  which  Queed's  Shoulders  can  bear  One  Man's  Roguery  and 
Another's  Dishonor,  and  of  what  these  Fardels  cost  him:  how 
for  the  Second  Time  in  his  Life  he  stays  out  of  Bed  to  think. 


HARLEE,  sitting  upstairs,  took  the  card  from  the  tray 
and,  seeing  the  name  upon  it,  imperceptibly  hesitated. 
But  even  while  hesitating,  she  rose  and  turned  to  her 
dressing-table  mirror. 

"Very  well.  Say  that  I'll  be  down  in  a  minute." 
She  felt  nervous,  she  did  not  know  why;  chilled  at  her 
hands  and  cold  within;  she  rubbed  her  cheeks  vigorously 
with  a  handkerchief  to  restore  to  them  some  of  the  color 
which  had  fled.  There  was  a  slightly  pinched  look  at  the 
corners  of  her  mouth,  and  she  smiled  at  her  reflection  in  the 
glass,  somewhat  artificially  and  elaborately,  until  she  had 
chased  it  away.  Undoubtedly  she  had  been  working  too  hard 
by  day,  and  going  too  hard  by  night;  she  must  let  up,  stop 
burning  the  candle  at  both  ends.  But  she  must  see  Mr. 
Queed,  of  course,  to  show  him  finally  that  no  explanation 
could  explain  now.  It  came  into  her  mind  that  this  was  but 
the  third  time  he  had  ever  been  inside  her  house  —  the  third, 
and  it  was  the  last. 

He  had  been  shown  into  the  front  parlor,  the  stiffer  and 
less  friendly  of  the  two  rooms,  and  its  effect  of  formality 
matched  well  with  the  temper  of  their  greeting.  By  the  ob 
vious  stratagem  of  coming  down  with  book  in  one  hand  and 
some  pretense  at  fancy-work  in  the  other,  Sharlee  avoided 
shaking  hands  with  him.  Having  served  their  purpose,  the 
small  burdens  were  laid  aside  upon  the  table.  He  had  been 
standing,  awaiting  her,  in  the  shadows  near  the  mantel  ;  the 
chair  that  he  chanced  to  drop  into  stood  almost  under  one  of 
the  yellow  lamps  ;  and  when  she  saw  his  face,  she  hardly  re- 


376  QUEED 

pressed  a  start.  For  he  seemed  to  have  aged  ten  years  since 
he  last  sat  in  her  parlor,  and  if  she  had  thought  his  face  long 
ago  as  grave  as  a  face  could  be,  she  now  perceived  her  mis 
take. 

The  moment  they  were  seated  he  began,  in  his  usual  voice, 
and  with  rather  the  air  of  having  thought  out  in  advance  ex 
actly  what  he  was  to  say. 

"I  have  come  again,  after  all,  to  talk  only  of  definite 
things.  In  fact,  I  have  something  of  much  importance  to 
tell  you.  May  I  ask  that  you  will  consider  it  as  confiden 
tial  for  the  present?" 

At  the  very  beginning  she  was  disquieted  by  the  discovery 
that  his  gaze  was  steadier  than  her  own.  She  was  annoy- 
ingly  conscious  of  looking  away  from  him,  as  she  said:  — 

"I  think  you  have  no  right  to  ask  that  of  me." 

Surface's  son  smiled  sadly.  "It  is  not  about  —  anything 
that  you  could  possibly  guess.  I  have  made  a  discovery  of 
—  a  business  nature,  which  concerns  you  vitally." 

"A  discovery?" 

"Yes.  The  circumstances  are  such  that  I  do  not  feel  that 
anybody  should  know  of  it  just  yet,  but  you.  However  — " 

"I  think  you  must  leave  me  to  decide,  after  hearing 
you- 

" I  believe  I  will.  I  am  not  in  the  least  afraid  to  do  so. 
Miss  Weyland,  Henry  G.  Surface  is  alive." 

Her  face  showed  how  completely  taken  back  she  was  by 
the  introduction  of  this  topic,  so  utterly  remote  from  the 
subject  she  had  expected  of  him. 

"Not  only  that,"  continued  Queed,  evenly  —  "he  is  within 
reach.  Both  he  —  and  some  property  which  he  has  —  are 
within  reach  of  the  courts." 

"Oh!  How  do  you  know?  .  .  .  Where  is  he?" 

11  For  the  present  I  am  not  free  to  answer  those  questions." 

There  was  a  brief  silence.  Sharlee  looked  at  the  fire,  the 
stirrings  of  painful  memories  betrayed  in  her  eyes. 

"We  knew,  of  course,  that  he  might  be  still  alive,"  she 
said  slowly.  "I  —  hope  he  is  well  and  happy.  But  —  we 


QUEED  377 

have  no  interest  in  him  now.  That  is  all  closed  and  done 
with.  As  for  the  courts  —  I  am  sure  that  he  has  been  pun 
ished  already  more  than  enough." 

"It  is  not  a  question  of  punishing  him  any  more.  You 
fail  to  catch  my  meaning,  it  seems.  It  has  come  to  my 
knowledge  that  he  has  some  money,  a  good  deal  of  it  — " 

"But  you  cannot  have  imagined  that  I  would  want  his 
money?" 

"  His  money?  He  has  none.  It  is  all  yours.  That  is  why  I 
am  telling  you  about  it." 

"Oh,  but  that  can't  be  possible.   I  don't  understand." 

Sitting  upright  in  his  chair,  as  businesslike  as  an  attorney, 
Queed  explained  how  Surface  had  managed  to  secrete  part  of 
the  embezzled  trustee  funds,  and  had  been  snugly  living  on 
it  ever  since  his  release  from  prison. 

"The  exact  amount  is,  at  present,  mere  guesswork.  But  I 
think  it  will  hardly  fall  below  fifty  thousand  dollars,  and  it 
may  run  as  high  as  a  hundred  thousand.  I  learn  that  Mr. 
Surface  thinks,  or  pretends  to  think,  that  this  money  be 
longs  to  him.  He  is,  needless  to  say,  wholly  mistaken.  I  have 
taken  the  liberty  of  consulting  a  lawyer  about  it,  of  course 
laying  it  before  him  as  a  hypothetical  case.  I  am  advised 
that  when  Mr.  Surface  was  put  through  bankruptcy,  he  must 
have  made  a  false  statement  in  order  to  withhold  this 
money.  Therefore,  that  settlement  counts  for  nothing,  ex 
cept  to  make  him  punishable  for  perjury  now.  The  money 
is  yours  whenever  you  apply  for  it.  That  — 

"Oh  —  but  I  shall  not  apply  for  it.  I  don't  want  it,  you, 
see." 

"  It  is  not  a  question  of  whether  you  want  it  or  not.  It  is 
yours  —  in  just  the  way  that  the  furniture  in  this  room  is 
yours.  You  simply  have  no  right  to  evade  it." 

Through  all  the  agitation  she  felt  in  the  sudden  dragging 
out  of  this  long-buried  subject,  his  air  of  dictatorial  authority 
brought  the  blood  to  her  cheek. 

"I  have  a  right  to  evade  it,  in  the  first  place,  and  in  the 
second,  I  am  not  evading  it  at  all.  He  took  it ;  I  let  him  keep 


3/8  QUEED 

it.  That  is  the  whole  situation.  I  don't  want  it  —  I  could  n't 
touch  it  —  ' 

"Well,  don't  decide  that  now.  There  would  be  no  harm,  I 
suppose,  in  your  talking  with  your  mother  about  it  —  even 
with  some  man  in  whose  judgment  you  have  confidence. 
You  will  feel  differently  when  you  have  had  time  to  think  it 
over.  Probably  it  —  " 

"Thinking  it  over  will  make  not  the  slightest  difference 
in  the  way  I  feel  —  " 

"Perhaps  it  would  if  you  stopped  thinking  about  it  from  a 
purely  selfish  point  of  view.  Other  —  " 


"I  say,"  he  repeated  dryly,  "that  you  should  stop  think 
ing  of  the  matter  from  a  purely  selfish  point  of  view.  Don't 
you  know  that  that  is  what  you  are  doing?  You  are  think 
ing  only  whether  or  not  you,  personally,  desire  this  money. 
Well,  other  people  have  an  interest  in  the  question  besides 
you.  There  is  your  mother,  for  example.  Why  not  consider 
it  from  her  standpoint?  Why  not  consider  it  from  —  well, 
from  the  standpoint  of  Mr.  Surface?" 

"Of  Mr.  Surface?" 

"Certainly.  Suppose  that  in  his  old  age  he  has  become 
penitent,  and  wants  to  do  what  he  can  to  right  the  old  wrong. 
Would  you  refuse  him  absolution  by  declining  to  accept  your 
own  money?" 

"  I  think  it  will  be  time  enough  to  decide  that  when  Mr. 
Surface  asks  me  for  absolution." 

"  Undoubtedly.  I  have  particularly  asked,  you  remember, 
that  you  do  not  make  up  your  mind  to  anything  now." 

"But  you,"  said  she,  looking  at  him  steadily  enough 
now  —  "I  don't  understand  how  you  happen  to  be  here 
apparently  both  as  my  counselor  and  Mr.  Surface's 
agent." 

"I  have  a  right  to  both  capacities,  I  assure  you." 

"Or  —  have  you  a  habit  of  being  —  ?  " 

She  left  her  sentence  unended,  and  he  finished  it  for  her  in 
a  colorless  voice. 


QUEED  379 

"Of  being  on  two  sides  of  a  fence,  perhaps  you  were  about 
to  say?" 

She  made  no  reply. 

"That  is  what  you  were  going  to  say,  is  n't  it?" 

"Yes,  I  started  to  say  that,"  she  answered,  "and  then  I 
thought  better  of  it." 

She  spoke  calmly;  but  she  was  oddly  disquieted  by  his 
fixed  gaze,  and  angry  with  herself  for  feeling  it. 

"I  will  tell  you,"  said  he,  "how  I  happen  to  be  acting  in 
both  capacities." 

The  marks  of  his  internal  struggle  broke  through  upon  his 
face.  For  the  first  time,  it  occurred  to  Sharlee,  as  she  looked 
at  the  new  markings  about  his  straight-cut  mouth,  that  this 
old  young  man  whom  she  had  commonly  seen  so  matter-of- 
fact  and  self-contained,  might  be  a  person  of  stronger  emo 
tions  than  her  own.  After  all,  what  did  she  really  know  about 
him? 

As  if  to  answer  her,  his  controlled  voice  spoke. 

"Mr.  Surface  is  my  father.   I  am  his  son." 

She  smothered  a  little  cry.   "  Your  father/11 

"My  name,"  he  said,  with  a  face  of  stone,  "is  Henry  G. 
Surface,  Jr." 

"Your  father!"  she  echoed  lifelessly. 

Shocked  and  stunned,  she  turned  her  head  hurriedly 
away;  her  elbow  rested  on  the  broad  chair-arm,  and  her 
chin  sank  into  her  hand.  Surface's  son  looked  at  her.  It  was 
many  months  since  he  had  learned  to  look  at  her  as  at  a 
woman,  and  that  is  knowledge  that  is  not  unlearned.  His 
eyes  rested  upon  her  piled-up  mass  of  crinkly  brown  hair; 
upon  the  dark  curtain  of  lashes  lying  on  her  cheek;  upon 
the  firm  line  of  the  cheek,  which  swept  so  smoothly  into  the 
white  neck;  upon  the  rounded  bosom,  now  rising  and  falling 
so  fast;  upon  the  whole  pretty  little  person  which  could  so 
stir  him  now  to  undreamed  depths  of  his  being.  .  .  .  No 
altruism  here,  Fifi ;  no  self-denial  to  want  to  make  her  happy. 

He  began  speaking  quietly. 

"  I  can't  tell  you  now  how  I  found  out  all  this.   It  is  a  long 


QUEED 

story;  you  will  hear  it  all  some  day.  But  the  facts  are  all 
clear.  I  have  been  to  New  York  and  seen  Tim  Queed.  It  is 
—  strange,  is  it  not?  Do  you  remember  that  afternoon  in  my 
office,  when  I  showed  you  the  letters  from  him?  We  little 
thought  —  " 

"Ohme!"saidSharlee.   "Oh  me!" 

She  rose  hastily  and  walked  away  from  him,  unable  to 
bear  the  look  on  his  face.  For  a  pretense  of  doing  something, 
she  went  to  the  fire  and  poked  aimlessly  at  the  glowing 
coals. 

As  on  the  afternoon  of  which  he  spoke,  waves  of  pity  for 
the  little  Doctor's  worse  than  fatherlessness  swept  through 
her ;  only  these  waves  were  a  thousand  times  bigger  and 
stormier  than  those.  How  hardly  he  himself  had  taken  his 
sonship  she  read  in  the  strange  sadness  of  his  face.  She 
dared  not  let  him  see  how  desperately  sorry  for  him  she  felt ; 
the  most  perfunctory  phrase  might  betray  her.  Her  know 
ledge  of  his  falseness  stood  between  them  like  a  wall ;  blindly 
she  struggled  to  keep  it  staunch,  not  letting  her  rushing  pity 
undermine  and  crumble  it.  He  had  been  false  to  her,  like  his 
father.  Father  and  son,  they  had  deceived  and  betrayed 
her;  honor  and  truth  were  not  in  them. 

"So  you  see,"  the  son  was  saying,  "  I  have  a  close  personal 
interest  in  this  question  of  the  money.  Naturally  it  — 
means  a  good  deal  to  me  to  —  have  as  much  of  it  as  pos 
sible  restored.  Of  course  there  is  a  great  deal  which  —  he 
took,  and  which  —  we  are  not  in  position  to  restore  at  pre 
sent.  I  will  explain  later  what  is  to  be  done  about  that  — " 

' '  Oh,  don't ! ' '  she  begged.  ' '  I  never  want  to  see  or  hear  of 
it  again." 

Suddenly  she  turned  upon  him,  aware  that  her  self-control 
was  going,  but  unable  for  her  life  to  repress  the  sympathy  for 
him  which  welled  up  overwhelmingly  from  her  heart. 

"Won't  you  tell  me  something  more  about  it?  Please  do! 
Where  is  he?  Have  you  seen  him —  ?" 

"I  cannot  tell  you — " 

"Oh,  I  will  keep  your  confidence.    You  asked  me  if  I 


QUEED  381 

would.    I  will  —  won't  you  tell  me?    Is  he  here  —  in  the 
city—?" 

"You  must  not  ask  me  these  questions,"  he  said  with 
some  evidence  of  agitation. 

But  even  as  he  spoke,  he  saw  knowledge  dawn  painfully 
on  her  face.  His  shelter,  after  all,  was  too  small;  once  her 
glance  turned  that  way,  once  her  mind  started  upon  conjec 
tures,  discovery  had  been  inevitable. 

"Oh!"  she  cried,  in  a  choked  voice.  .  .  .  "It  is  Professor 
Nicolovius!" 

He  looked  at  her  steadily ;  no  change  passed  over  his  face. 
When  all  was  said,  he  was  glad  to  have  the  whole  truth  out; 
and  he  knew  the  secret  to  be  as  safe  with  her  as  with  him 
self. 

"No  one  must  know,"  he  said  sadly,  "until  his  death. 
That  is  not  far  away,  I  think." 

She  dropped  into  a  chair,  and  suddenly  buried  her  face  in 
her  hands. 

Surface's  son  had  risen  with  her,  but  he  did  not  resume 
his  seat.  He  stood  looking  down  at  her  bowed  head,  and  the 
expression  in  his  eyes,  if  she  had  looked  up  and  captured  it, 
might  have  taken  her  completely  by  surprise. 

His  chance,  indeed,  had  summoned  him,  though  not  for 
the  perfect  sacrifice.  Circumstance  had  crushed  out  most 
of  the  joy  of  giving.  For,  first,  she  had  suspected  him,  which 
nothing  could  ever  blot  out;  and  now,  when  she  knew  the 
truth  about  him,  there  could  hardly  be  much  left  for  him  to 
give.  It  needed  no  treacherous  editorial  to  make  her  hate 
the  son  of  his  father;  their  friendship  was  over  in  any  case. 

Still,  it  was  his  opportunity  to  do  for  her  something 
genuine  and  large;  to  pay  in  part  the  debt  he  owed  her  — 
the  personal  and  living  debt,  which  was  so  much  greater 
than  the  dead  thing  of  principal  and  interest. 

No,  no.  It  was  not  endurable  that  this  proud  little  lady, 
who  kept  her  head  so  high,  should  find  at  the  last  moment, 
this  stain  upon  her  lover's  honor. 

She  dropped  her  hands  and  lifted  a  white  face. 


382  QUEED 

"And  you  — "  she  began  unsteadily,  but  checked  herself 
and  went  on  in  a  calmer  voice.  "And  you  —  after  what  he 
has  done  to  you,  too — you  are  going  to  stand  by  him  —  take 
his  name  —  accept  that  inheritance  —  be  his  son?" 

"What  else  is  there  for  me  to  do?" 

Their  eyes  met,  and  hers  were  hurriedly  averted. 

"Don't  you  think,"  he  said,  "that  that  is  the  only  thing 
to  do?" 

Again  she  found  it  impossible  to  endure  the  knowledge  of 
his  fixed  gaze.  She  rose  once  more  and  stood  at  the  mantel, 
her  forehead  leaned  against  her  hand  upon  it,  staring  unsee- 
ingly  down  into  the  fire. 

aHow  can  I  tell  you  how  fine  a  thing  you  are  doing  —  how 
big  —  and  splendid  —  when  —  " 

A  dark  red  color  flooded  his  face  from  neck  to  forehead ;  it 
receded  almost  violently  leaving  him  whiter  than  before. 

"Not  at  all!  Not  in  the. least!"  he  said,  with  all  his  old 
impatience.  "I  could  not  escape  if  I  would." 

She  seemed  not  to  hear  him.  "  How  can  I  tell  you  that  — 
and  about  how  sorry  I  am  —  when  all  the  time  it  seems  that 
I  can  think  only  of  —  something  else!" 

"You  are  speaking  of  the  reformatory,"  he  said,  with 
bracing  directness. 

There  followed  a  strained  silence. 

"Oh,"  broke  from  her  —  "how  could  you  bear  to  do  it?" 

"  Don't  you  see  that  we  cannot  possibly  discuss  it?  It  is  a 
question  of  one's  honor  —  is  n't  it?  It  is  impossible  that  such 
a  thing  could  be  argued  about." 

"But  —  surely  you  have  something  to  say  —  some  ex 
planation  to  make !  Tell  me.  You  will  not  find  me — a  hard 
judge." 

"I'm  sorry,"  he  said  brusquely,  "but  I  can  make  no 
explanation." 

She  was  conscious  that  he  stood  beside  her  on  the  hearth 
rug.  Though  her  face  was  lowered  and  turned  from  him,  the 
eye  of  her  mind  held  perfectly  the  presentment  of  his  face, 
and  she  knew  that  more  than  age  had  gone  over  it  since  she 


QUEED  383 

had  seen  it  last.  Had  any  other  man  in  the  world  but  West 
been  in  the  balance,  she  felt  that,  despite  his  own  words,  she 
could  no  longer  believe  him  guilty.  And  even  as  it  was  — 
how  could  that  conceivably  be  the  face  of  a  man  who  — 

"Won't  you  shake  hands?" 

Turning,  she  gave  him  briefly  the  tips  of  fingers  cold  as 
ice.  As  their  hands  touched,  a  sudden  tragic  sense  over 
whelmed  him  that  here  was  a  farewell  indeed.  The  light 
contact  set  him  shaking;  and  for  a  moment  his  iron  self- 
control,  which  covered  torments  she  never  guessed  at,  almost 
forsook  him. 

"  Good-by.  And  may  that  God  of  yours  who  loves  all  that 
is  beautiful  and  sweet  be  good  to  you  —  now  and  always." 

She  made  no  reply ;  he  wheeled,  abruptly,  and  left  her.  But 
on  the  threshold  he  was  checked  by  the  sound  of  her  voice. 

The  interview,  from  the  beginning,  had  profoundly  af 
fected  her ;  these  last  words,  so  utterly  unlike  his  usual  man 
ner  of  speech,  had  shaken  her  through  and  through.  For 
some  moments  she  had  been  miserably  aware  that,  if  he 
would  but  tell  her  everything  and  throw  himself  on  her 
mercy,  she  would  instantly  forgive  him.  And  now,  when 
she  saw  that  she  could  not  make  him  do  that,  she  felt  that 
tiny  door,  which  she  had  thought  double-locked  forever, 
creaking  open,  and  heard  herself  saying  in  a  small,  desper 
ate  voice:  — 

"  You  did  write  it,  did  n't  you?'1 

But  he  paused  only  long  enough  to  look  at  her  and  say, 
quite  convincingly:  — 

"  You  need  hardly  ask  that  —  now  —  need  you?" 

He  went  home,  to  his  own  bedroom,  lit  his  small  student- 
lamp,  and  sat  down  at  his  table  to  begin  a  new  article.  The 
debt  of  money  which  was  his  patrimony  required  of  him  that 
he  should  make  every  minute  tell  now. 

In  old  newspaper  files  at  the  State  Library,  he  had  found 
the  facts  of  his  father's  defalcations.  The  total  embezzle 
ment  from  the  Weyland  estate,  allowing  for  $14,000  recov- 


384  QUEED 

ered  in  the  enforced  settlement  of  Surface's  affairs,  stood  at 
$203,000.  But  that  was  twenty-seven  years  ago,  and  in  all 
this  time  interest  had  been  doubling  and  redoubling:  simple 
interest,  at  4%,  brought  it  to  $420,000;  compound  interest 
to  something  like  $500,000,  due  at  the  present  moment. 
Against  this  could  be  credited  only  his  father's  " nest-egg" 

—  provided  always  that  he  could  find  it  —  estimated  at  not 
less  than  $50,000.    That  left  his  father's  son  staring  at  a 
debt  of  $450,000,  due  and  payable  now.    It  was  of  course, 
utterly  hopeless.  The  interest  on  that  sum  alone  was  $18,000 
a  year,  and  he  could  not  earn  $5000  a  year  to  save  his  im 
mortal  soul. 

So  the  son  knew  that,  however  desperately  he  might 
strive,  he  would  go  to  his  grave  more  deeply  in  debt  to  Shar- 
lee  Weyland  than  he  stood  at  this  moment.  But  of  course 
it  was  the  trying  that  chiefly  counted.  The  fifty  thousand 
dollars,  which  he  would  turn  over  to  her  as  soon  as  he  got  it 

—  how  he  was  counting  on  a  sum  as  big  as  that !  —  would  be 
a  help ;  so  would  the  three  or  four  thousand  a  year  which  he 
counted  on  paying  toward  keeping  down  the  interest.    This 
money  in  itself  would  be  a  good.    But  much  better  than 
that,  it  would  stand  as  a  gage  that  the  son  acknowledged  and 
desired  to  atone  for  his  father's  dishonor. 

His  book  must  stand  aside  now  —  it  might  be  forever. 
Henceforward  he  must  count  his  success  upon  a  cash-regis 
ter.  But  to-night  his  pencil  labored  and  dragged.  What  he 
wrote  he  saw  was  not  good.  He  could  do  harder  things  than 
force  himself  to  sit  at  a  table  and  put  writing  upon  paper ;  but 
over  the  subtler  processes  of  his  mind,  which  alone  yields  the 
rich  fruit,  no  man  is  master.  In  an  hour  he  put  out  his  lamp, 
undressed  in  the  dark,  and  went  to  bed. 

He  lay  on  his  back  in  the  blackness,  and  in  all  the  world 
he  could  find  nothing  to  think  about  but  Sharlee  Wey 
land. 

Of  all  that  she  had  done  for  him,  in  a  personal  way,  he  had 
at  least  tried  to  give  her  some  idea ;  he  was  glad  to  remember 
that  now.  And  now  at  the  last,  when  he  was  nearer  worthy 


QUEED  385 

than  ever  before,  she  had  turned  him  out  Jbecause  she  be 
lieved  that  he  had  stooped  to  dishonor.  She  would  have  for 
given  his  sonship ;  he  had  been  mistaken  about  that.  She  had 
felt  sympathy  and  sorrow  for  Henry  Surface's  son,  and  not 
repulsion,  for  he  had  read  it  in  her  face.  But  she  could  not 
forgive  him  a  personal  dishonor.  And  he  was  glad  that,  so 
believing,  she  would  do  as  she  had  done;  it  was  the  per 
fect  thing  to  do;  to  demand  honor  without  a  blemish,  or  to 
cancel  all.  Never  had  she  stood  so  high  in  his  fancy  as 
now  when  she  had  ordered  him  out  of  her  life.  His  heart 
leapt  with  the  knowledge  that,  though  she  would  never  know 
it,  he  was  her  true  mate  there,  in  their  pure  passion  for  Truth. 

Whatever  else  might  or  might  not  have  been,  the  know 
ledge  remained  with  him  that  she  herself  had  suspected  and 
convicted  him.  In  all  that  mattered  their  friendship  had 
ended  there.  Distrust  was  unbearable  between  friends.  It 
was  a  flaw  in  his  little  lady  that  she  could  believe  him  capable 
of  baseness.  .  .  .  But  not  an  unforgivable  flaw,  it  would 
seem,  since  every  hour  that  he  had  spent  in  her  presence  had 
become  roses  and  music  in  his  memory,  and  the  thought  that 
he  would  see  her  no  more  stabbed  ceaselessly  at  his  heart. 

Yes,  Surface's  son  knew  very  well  what  was  the  matter  with 
him  now.  The  knowledge  pulled  him  from  his  bed  to  a  seat 
by  the  open  window ;  dragged  him  from  his  chair  to  send  him 
pacing  on  bare  feet  up  and  down  his  little  bedroom,  up  and 
down,  up  and  down;  threw  him  later,  much  later,  into  his 
chair  again,  to  gaze  out,  quiet  and  exhausted,  over  the  sleep 
ing  city. 

He  had  written  something  of  love  in  his  time.  In  his  per 
fect  scheme  of  human  society,  he  had  diagnosed  with  sci 
entific  precision  the  instinct  of  sex  attraction  implanted  in 
man's  being  for  the  most  obvious  and  grossly  practical  of 
reasons:  an  illusive  candle-glow  easily  lit,  quickly  extin 
guished  when  its  uses  were  fulfilled.  And  lo,  here  was  love 
tearing  him  by  the  throat  till  he  choked ;  an  exquisite  torture, 
a  rampant  passion,  a  devastating  flame,  that  most  glorified 
when  it  burned  most  deeply,  aroar  and  ablaze  forevermore. 


386  QUEED 

He  sat  by  the  window  and  looked  out  over  the  sleeping 
city. 

By  slow  degrees,  he  had  allowed  himself  to  be  drawn  from 
his  academic  hermitry  into  contact  with  the  visible  life 
around  him.  And  everywhere  that  he  had  touched  life,  it  had 
turned  about  and  smitten  him.  He  had  meant  to  be  a  great 
editor  of  the  Post  some  day,  and  the  Post  had  turned  him  out 
with  a  brand  of  dishonor  upon  his  forehead.  He  had  tried  to 
befriend  a  friendless  old  man,  and  he  had  acquired  a  father 
whose  bequest  was  a  rogue's  debt,  and  his  name  a  byword 
and  a  hissing.  He  had  let  himself  be  befriended  by  a  slim 
little  girl  with  a  passion  for  Truth  and  enough  blue  eyes  for 
two,  and  the  price  of  that  contact  was  this  pain  in  his  heart 
which  would  not  be  still  .  .  .  which  would  not  be  still. 

Yet  he  would  not  have  had  anything  different,  would  not 
have  changed  anything  if  he  could.  He  was  no  longer  the 
pure  scientist  in  the  observatory,  but  a  bigger  and  better 
thing,  a  man  ...  A  man  down  in  the  thick  of  the  hurly- 
burly  which  we  call  This  Life,  and  which,  when  all  is  said,  is 
all  that  we  certainly  know.  Not  by  pen  alone,  but  also  by 
body  and  mind  and  heart  and  spirit,  he  had  taken  his  man's 
place  in  Society.  And  as  for  this  unimagined  pain  that  strung 
his  whole  being  upon  the  thumb-screw,  it  was  nothing  but 
the  measure  of  the  life  he  had  now,  and  had  it  more  abund 
antly.  Oh,  all  was  for  the  best,  all  as  it  should  be.  He  knew 
the  truth  about  living  at  last,  and  it  is  the  truth  that  makes 
men  free. 


XXX 

Death  of  the  Old  Professor,  and  how  Queed  finds  that  his  List  of 
Friends  has  grown;  a  Last  Will  and  Testament;  Exchange 
of  Letters  among  Prominent  Attorneys,  which  unhappily 
proves  futile. 

ON  the  merriest,  maddest  day  in  March,  Henry  G.  Sur 
face,  who  had  bitterly  complained  of  earthly  justice, 
slipped  away  to  join  the  invisible  procession  which 
somewhere  winds  into  the  presence  of  the  Incorruptible 
Judge.  He  went  with  his  lips  locked.  At  the  last  moment 
there  had  been  faint  signs  of  recurring  consciousness;  the 
doctor  had  said  that  there  was  one  chance  in  a  hundred  that 
the  dying  man  might  have  a  normal  moment  at  the  end. 
On  this  chance  his  son  had  said  to  the  nurse,  alone  with 
him  in  the  room :  — 

"Will  you  kindly  leave  me  with  him  a  moment?  If  he 
should  be  conscious  there  is  a  private  question  of  importance 
that  I  must  ask  him." 

She  left  him.  The  young  man  knelt  down  by  the  bedside, 
and  put  his  lips  close  to  the  old  man's  ear.  Vainly  he  tried  to 
drive  his  voice  into  that  stilled  consciousness,  and  drag  from 
his  father  the  secret  of  the  hiding-place  of  his  loot. 

"Father!"  he  said,  over  and  over.  "Father!  Where  is  the 
money?" 

There  was  no  doubt  that  the  old  man  stirred  a  little.  In 
the  dim  light  of  the  room  it  seemed  to  his  son  that  his  right 
eye  half  opened,  leaving  the  other  closed  in  a  ghastly  parody 
of  a  wink,  while  the  upper  lip  drew  away  from  the  strong 
teeth  like  an  evil  imitation  of  the  old  bland  sneer.  But  that 
was  all. 

So  Surface  died,  and  was  gathered  to  his  fathers.  The  em 
bargo  of  secrecy  was  lifted ;  and  the  very  first  step  toward 


388  QUEED 

righting  the  ancient  wrong  was  to  let  the  full  facts  be  known. 
Henry  G.  Surface,  Jr.,  took  this  step,  in  person,  by  at  once 
telephoning  all  that  was  salient  to  the  Post.  Brower  Williams, 
the  Post's  city  editor,  at  the  other  end  of  the  wire,  called  the 
name  of  his  God  in  holy  awe  at  the  dimensions  of  the  scoop 
thus  dropped  down  upon  him  as  from  heaven ;  and  implored 
the  Doc,  for  old  time's  sake,  by  all  that  he  held  most  sacred 
and  most  dear,  to  say  not  a  word  till  the  evening  papers  were 
out,  thus  insuring  the  sensation  for  the  Post. 

Mr.  Williams's  professional  appraisement  of  the  scoop 
proved  not  extravagant.  The  Post's  five  columns  next  morn 
ing  threw  the  city  into  something  like  an  uproar.  It  is  doubt 
ful  if  you  would  not  have  to  go  back  to  the  '6o's  to  find  a 
newspaper  story  which  eclipsed  this  one  in  effect.  For  a  gen 
eration,  the  biography  of  Henry  G.  Surface  had  had,  in  that 
city  and  State,  a  quality  of  undying  interest,  and  the  sudden 
denouement,  more  thrilling  than  any  fiction,  captured  the 
imagination  of  the  dullest.  Nothing  else  was  mentioned  at 
any  breakfast-table  where  a  morning  paper  was  taken  that 
day;  hardly  anything  for  many  breakfasts  to  follow.  In 
homes  containing  boys  who  had  actually  studied  Greek  un 
der  the  mysterious  Professor  Nicolovius  at  Milner's  School, 
discussion  grew  almost  hectic ;  wThile  at  Mrs.  Paynter's,  where 
everybody  was  virtually  a  leading  actor  in  the  moving  drama, 
the  excitement  closely  approached  delirium. 

Henry  G.  Surface,  Jr.,  was  up  betimes  on  the  morning  after 
his  father's  death  —  in  fact,  as  will  appear,  he  had  not  found 
time  to  go  to  bed  at  all  —  and  the  sensational  effects  of  the 
Post's  story  were  not  lost  upon  him.  As  early  as  seven  o'clock, 
a  knot  of  people  had  gathered  in  front  of  the  little  house  on 
Duke  of  Gloucester  Street,  staring  curiously  at  the  shut 
blinds,  and  telling  each  other,  doubtless,  how  well  they  had 
known  the  dead  man.  When  young  Surface  came  out  of  the 
front  door,  an  awed  hush  fell  upon  them;  he  was  aware  of 
their  nudges,  and  their  curious  but  oddly  respectful  stare. 
And  this,  at  the  very  beginning,  was  typical  of  the  whole  day; 
wherever  he  went,  he  found  himself  an  object  of  the  frankest 


QUEED  389 

public  curiosity.  But  all  of  this  interest,  he  early  discovered, 
was  neither  cool  nor  impersonal. 

To  begin  with,  there  was  the  Post's  story  itself.  As  he  hur 
ried  through  it  very  early  in  the  morning,  the  young  man 
was  struck  again  and  again  with  the  delicacy  of  the  phrasing. 
And  gradually  it  came  to  him  that  the  young  men  of  the  Post 
had  made  very  special  efforts  to  avoid  hurting  the  feelings  of 
'  their  old  associate  and  friend  the  Doc.  This  little  discovery 
had  touched  him  unbelievably.  And  it  was  only  part  with 
other  kindness  that  came  to  him  to  soften  that  first  long  day 
of  his  acknowledged  sonship.  Probably  the  sympathy  ex 
tended  to  him  from  various  sources  was  not  really  so  abund 
ant,  but  to  him,  having  looked  for  nothing,  it  was  simply 
overwhelming.  All  day,  it  seemed  to  him,  his  door-bell  and 
telephone  rang,  all  day  unexpected  people  of  all  sorts  and 
conditions  stopped  him  on  the  street  —  only  to  tell  him,  in 
many  ways  and  sometimes  without  saying  a  word  about  it, 
that  they  were  sorry. 

The  very  first  of  them  to  come  was  Charles  Gardiner  West, 
stopping  on  his  way  to  the  office,  troubled,  concerned,  truly 
sympathetic,  to  express,  in  a  beautiful  and  perfect  way,  his 
lasting  interest  in  his  one-time  assistant.  Not  far  behind  him 
had  come  Mr.  Hickok,  the  director  who  looked  like  James  E. 
Winter,  who  had  often  chatted  with  the  assistant  editor  in 
times  gone  by,  and  who  spoke  confidently  of  the  day  when  he 
would  come  back  to  the  Post.  Beverley  Byrd  had  come,  too, 
manly  and  friendly;  Plonny  Neal,  ill  at  ease  for  once  in  his 
life ;  Evan  Montague,  of  the  Post,  had  asked  to  be  allowed  to 
make  the  arrangements  for  the  funeral;  Buck  Klinker  had 
actually  made  those  arrangements.  Better  than  most  of 
these,  perhaps,  were  the  young  men  of  the  Mercury,  raw, 
embarrassed,  genuine  young  men,  who,  stopping  him  on  the 
street,  did  not  seem  to  know  why  they  stopped  him,  who, 
lacking  West's  verbal  felicity,  could  do  nothing  but  take  his 
hand,  hot  with  the  fear  that  they  might  be  betrayed  into 
expressing  any  feeling,  and  stammer  out:  "  Doc,  if  you  want 
anything  —  why  dammit,  Doc  —  you  call  on  me,  hear?" 


390  QUEED 

Best  of  all  had  been  Buck  Klinker  —  Buck,  who  had  made 
him  physically,  who  had  dragged  him  into  contact  with  life 
over  his  own  protests,  who  had  given  him  the  first  editorial 
he  ever  wrote  that  was  worth  reading  —  Buck,  the  first  real 
friend  he  had  ever  had.  It  was  to  Buck  that  he  had  tele 
phoned  an  hour  after  his  father's  death,  for  he  needed  help 
of  a  practical  sort  at  once,  and  his  one-time  trainer  was  the 
man  of  all  men  to  give  it  to  him.  Buck  had  come,  constrained 
and  silent;  he  was  obviously  awed  by  the  Doc's  sudden 
emergence  into  stunning  notoriety.  To  be  Surface's  son  was, 
to  him,  like  being  the  son  of  Iscariot  and  Lucrezia  Borgia. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  was  aware  that,  of  Klinkers  and 
Queeds,  a  Surface  might  proudly  say:  "There  are  no  such 
people."  So  he  had  greeted  his  friend  stiffly  as  Mr.  Surface, 
and  was  amazed  at  the  agitation  with  which  that  usually  im 
passive  young  man  had  put  a  hand  upon  his  shoulder  and 
said :  "  I  'm  the  same  Doc  always  to  you,  Buck,  only  now  I  'm 
Doc  Surface  instead  of  Doc  Queed."  After  that  everything 
had  been  all  right.  Buck  had  answered  very  much  after  the 
fashion  of  the  young  men  of  the  Mercury,  and  then  rushed  off 
to  arrange  for  the  interment,  and  also  to  find  for  Doc  Sur 
face  lodgings  somewhere  which  heavily  undercut  Mrs.  Payn- 
ter's  modest  prices. 

The  sudden  discovery  that  he  was  not  alone  in  the  world, 
that  he  had  friends  in  it,  real  friends  who  believed  in  him  and 
whom  nothing  could  ever  take  away,  shook  the  young  man 
to  the  depths  of  his  being.  Was  not  this  compensation  for 
everything?  Never  had  he  imagined  that  people  could  be  so 
kind;  never  had  he  dreamed  that  people's  kindness  could 
mean  so  much  to  him.  In  the  light  of  this  new  knowledge,  it 
seemed  to  him  that  the  last  scales  fell  from  his  eyes.  .  .  . 
Were  not  these  friendships,  after  all,  the  best  work  of  a  man's 
life?  Did  he  place  a  higher  value  even  on  his  book  itself, 
which,  it  seemed,  he  might  never  finish  now? 

And  now  there  returned  to  him  something  that  the  dead 
old  Colonel  had  told  him  long  ago,  and  to-day  he  saw  it  for 
truth.  However  his  father  had  wronged  him,  he  would  always 


QUEED  391 

have  this,  at  least,  to  bless  his  memory  for.  For  it  was  his 
father  who  had  called  him  to  live  in  this  city  where  dwelt, 
as  the  strong  voice  that  was  now  still  had  said,  the  kindest 
and  sweetest  people  in  the  world. 

Henry  G.  Surface  died  at  half-past  two  o'clock  on  the  after 
noon  df  March  24.  At  one  o  'clock  that  night,  while  the  Post's 
startling  story  was  yet  in  process  of  the  making,  his  son  stood 
at  the  mantel  in  Surface's  sitting-room,  and  looked  over  the 
wreck  that  his  hands  had  made.  That  his  father's  treasures 
were  hidden  somewhere  here  he  had  hardly  entertained  a 
doubt.  Yet  he  had  pulled  the  place  all  to  pieces  without  find 
ing  a  trace  of  them. 

The  once  pretty  sitting-room  looked,  indeed,  as  if  a  tor 
nado  had  struck  it.  The  fireplace  was  a  litter  of  broken  brick 
and  mortar ;  half  the  floor  was  ripped  up  and  the  boards  flung 
back  anyhow;  table  drawers  and  bookcases  had  been  ran 
sacked,  and  looked  it;  books  rifled  in  vain  were  heaped  in 
disorderly  hummocks  wherever  there  was  room  for  them; 
everywhere  a  vandal  hand  had  been,  leaving  behind  a  train 
of  devastation  and  ruin. 

And  it  had  all  been  fruitless.  He  had  been  working  with 
out  pause  since  half-past  six  o'clock,  and  not  the  smallest 
clue  had  rewarded  him. 

It  was  one  of  those  interludes  when  early  spring  demon 
strates  that  she  could  play  August  convincingly  had  she  a 
mind  to.  The  night  was  stifling.  That  the  windows  had  to 
be  shut  tight,  to  deaden  the  noise  of  loosening  brick  and  rip 
ping  board,  made  matters  so  much  the  worse.  Surface  was 
stripped  to  the  waist,  and  it  needed  no  second  glance  at  him, 
as  he  stood  now,  to  see  that  he  was  physically  competent. 
There  was  no  one-sided  over-development  here;  Klinker's 
exercises,  it  will  be  remembered,  were  for  all  parts  of  the 
body.  Shoulders  stalwart,  but  not  too  broad,  rounded  beau 
tifully  into  the  upper  arm ;  the  chest  swelled  like  a  full  sail ; 
many  a  woman  in  that  town  had  a  larger  waist.  Never  he 
moved  but  muscle  flowed  and  rippled  under  the  shining  skin ; 


392  QUEED 

he  raised  his  right  hand  to  scratch  his  left  ear,  and  the  hard 
blue  biceps  leaped  out  like  a  live  thing.  In  fact,  it  had  been 
some  months  since  the  young  man  had  first  entertained  the 
suspicion  that  he  could  administer  that  thrashing  to  Mr.  Pat 
whenever  he  felt  inclined.  Only  it  happened  that  he  and  Mr. 
Pat  had  become  pretty  good  friends  now,  and  it  was  the 
proof-reader's  boast  that  he  had  never  once  made  a  bull  in 
"Mr.  Queed's  copy"  since  the  day  of  the  famous  fleas. 

In  the  quiet  night  the  young  man  stood  resting  from 
his  labors,  and  taking  depressed  thought.  He  was  covered 
with  grime  and  streaked  with  swreat;  a  ragged  red  stripe  on 
his  cheek,  where  a  board  had  bounced  up  and  struck  him, 
detracted  nothing  from  the  sombreness  of  his  appearance. 
Somewhere,  valuable  papers  waited  to  be  found ;  bank-books, 
certainly ;  very  likely  stock  or  bonds  or  certificates  of  deposit ; 
please  God,  a  will.  Somewhere  —  but  where?  From  his  fa 
ther's  significant  remark  during  their  last  conversation,  he 
would  have  staked  his  life  that  all  these  things  were  here,  in 
easy  reach.  And  yet  — 

Standing  precariously  on  the  loose-piled  bricks  of  the  fire 
place,  he  looked  over  the  ravaged  room.  He  felt  profoundly 
discouraged.  Success  in  this  search  meant  more  to  him  than 
he  liked  to  think  about,  and  now  his  chance  of  success  had 
shrunk  to  the  vanishing  point.  The  bowels  of  the  room  lay 
open  before  his  eye,  and  there  was  no  hiding-place  in  them. 
He  knew  of  nowhere  else  to  look.  The  cold  fear  seized  him 
that  the  money  and  the  papers  were  hidden  beyond  his  find 
ing  —  that  they  lay  tucked  away  in  some  safety-deposit 
vault  in  New  York,  where  his  eye  would  never  hunt  them 
out. 

Surface's  son  leaned  against  the  elaborate  mantel,  illimit- 
ably  weary.  He  shifted  his  position  ever  so  little ;  and  there 
upon  luck  did  for  him  what  reason  would  never  have  done. 
The  brick  on  which  his  right  foot  rested  turned  under  his 
weight  and  he  lost  his  foothold.  To  save  himself,  he  caught 
the  mantel-top  with  both  hands,  and  the  next  moment 
pitched  heavily  backward  to  the  floor. 


QUEED  393 

The  mantel,  in  fact,  had  come  off  in  his  hands.  It  pitched 
to  the  floor  with  him,  speeding  his  fall,  thumping  upon  his 
chest  like  a  vigorous  adversary.  But  the  violence  of  his  de 
scent  only  made  him  the  more  sharply  aware  that  this 
strange  mantel  had  left  its  moorings  as  though  on  greased 
rollers. 

His  heart  playing  a  sudden  drum-beat,  he  threw  the 
carven  timber  from  him  and  bounded  to  his  feet.  The  first 
flying  glance  showed  him  the  strange  truth :  his  blundering 
feet  had  marvelously  stumbled  into  his  father's  arcana. 
For  he  looked,  not  at  an  unsightly  mass  of  splintered  laths 
and  torn  wall-paper  and  shattered  plaster,  but  into  as  neat 
a  little  cupboard  as  a  man  could  wish. 

The  cupboard  was  as  wide  as  the  mantel  itself;  lined  and 
ceiled  with  a  dark  red  wood  which  beautifully  threw  back 
the  glare  of  the  dancing  gas-jet.  It  was  half-full  of  things, 
old  books,  letters,  bundles  of  papers  held  together  with  rub 
ber  bands,  canvas  bags  —  all  grouped  and  piled  in  the  most 
orderly  way  about  a  large  tin  dispatch-box.  This  box  drew 
the  young  man's  gaze  like  a  sudden  shout ;  he  was  hardly  on 
his  feet  before  he  had  sprung  forward  and  jerked  it  out. 
Instantly  the  treacherous  bricks  threw  him  again;  sprawled 
on  the  floor  he  seized  one  of  them  and  smashed  through  the 
hasp  at  a  blow. 

Bit  by  bit  the  illuminating  truth  came  out.  In  all  his  own 
calculations,  close  and  exact  as  he  had  thought  them,  he  had 
lost  sight  of  one  simple  but  vital  fact.  In  the  years  that  he 
had  been  in  prison,  his  father  had  spent  no  money  beyond 
the  twenty-five  dollars  a  month  to  Tim  Queed;  and  com 
paratively  little  in  the  years  of  his  wanderings.  In  all  this 
time  the  interest  upon  his  "nest-egg"  had  been  steadily 
accumulating.  Five  per  cent  railroad  bonds,  and  certificates 
of  deposit  in  four  different  banks,  were  the  forms  in  which 
the  money  had  been  tucked  away,  by  what  devilish  clever 
ness  could  only  be  imagined.  But  the  simple  fact  was  that 
his  father  had  died  worth  not  less  than  two  hundred  thou 
sand  dollars  and  probably  more.  And  this  did  not  include 


394  QUEED 

the  house,  which,  it  appeared,  his  father  had  bought,  and 
not  leased  as  he  said ;  nor  did  it  include  four  thousand  four 
hundred  dollars  in  gold  and  banknotes  which  he  found  in 
the  canvas  sacks  after  his  first  flying  calculation  was 
made.  • 

Early  in  the  morning,  when  the  newsboys  were  already 
crying  the  Post  upon  the  streets,  young  Henry  Surface  came 
at  last  upon  the  will.  It  was  very  brief,  but  entirely  clear  and 
to  the  point.  His  father  had  left  to  him  without  conditions, 
everything  of  which  he  died  possessed.  The  will  was  dated  in 
June  of  the  previous  summer  —  he  recalled  a  two  days'  ab 
sence  of  his  father's  at  that  time  —  and  was  witnessed,  in  a 
villainous  hand,  by  Timothy  Queed. 

There  were  many  formalities  to  be  complied  with,  and 
some  of  them  would  take  time.  But  within  a  week  matters 
were  on  a  solid  enough  footing  to  warrant  a  first  step;  and 
about  this  time  Sharlee  Weyland  read,  at  her  breakfast- table 
one  morning,  a  long  letter  which  surprised  and  disturbed  her 
very  much. 

The  letter  came  from  a  well-known  firm  of  attorneys.  At 
great  length  it  rehearsed  the  misfortunes  that  had  befallen 
the  Weyland  estate,  through  the  misappropriations  of  the 
late  Henry  G.  Surface.  But  the  gist  of  this  letter,  briefly  put, 
was  that  the  late  Henry  G.  Surface  had  died  possessed  of  a 
property  estimated  to  be  worth  two  hundred  thousand  dol 
lars,  either  more  or  less ;  that  this  property  was  believed  to 
be  merely  the  late  trustee's  appropriations  from  the  Wey 
land  estate,  with  accrued  interest;  that  "our  client  Mr. 
Henry  G.  Surface,  Jr.,  heir  by  will  to  his  father's  ostensible 
property,"  therefore  purposed  to  pay  over  this  sum  to  the 
Weyland  estate,  as  soon  as  necessary  formalities  could  be 
complied  with ;  and  that,  further,  our  client,  Mr.  Henry  G. 
Surface,  Jr.,  assumed  personal  responsibility  "for  the  resi 
due  due  to  your  late  father's  estate,  amounting  to  one  hun 
dred  and  seventeen  thousand  dollars,  either  more  or  less, 
with  interest  since  1881;  and  this  debt,  he  instructs  us  to 


QUEED  395 

say,  he  will  discharge  from  time  to  time,  as  his  own  resources 
will  permit." 

So  wrote  Messrs.  Blair  and  Jamieson  to  Miss  Charlotte 
Lee  Weyland,  congratulating  her,  "in  conclusion,  upon  the 
strange  circumstances  which  have  brought  you,  after  so  long 
an  interval,  justice  and  restitution,"  and  begging  to  remain 
very  respectfully  hers.  To  which  letter  after  four  days'  in 
terval,  they  received  the  following  reply: 

Messrs.  Blair  &  Jamieson, 

Commonwealth  Building, 

City. 
DEAR  SIRS:  — 

Our  client,  Miss  C.  L.  Weyland,  of  this  city,  instructs  us  to  advise  you, 
in  reply  to  your  letter  of  the  4th  inst.,  directed  to  her,  that,  while  thank 
ing  you  for  the  expression  of  intention  therein  contained  anent  the  pro 
perty  left  by  the  late  Henry  G.  Surface,  and  very  cordially  appreciating 
the  spirit  actuating  Mr.  Henry  G.  Surface,  Jr.,  in  the  matter,  she  never 
theless  feels  herself  without  title  or  claim  to  said  property,  and  therefore 
positively  declines  to  accept  it,  in  whole  or  in  any  part. 

Respectfully  yours, 
AMPERSAND,  BOLLING  AND  BYRD. 

A  more  argumentative  and  insistent  letter  from  Messrs. 
Blair  and  Jamieson  was  answered  with  the  same  brief  posi- 
tiveness  by  Messrs.  Ampersand,  Boiling  and  Byrd.  There 
after,  no  more  communications  were  exchanged  by  the  at 
torneys.  But  a  day  or  two  after  her  second  refusal,  Sharlee 
Weyland  received  another  letter  about  the  matter  of  dispute, 
this  time  a  more  personal  one.  The  envelope  was  directed 
in  a  small  neat  hand  which  she  knew  very  well ;  she  had  first 
seen  it  on  sheets  of  yellow  paper  in  Mrs.  Paynter's  dining- 
room.  The  letter  said : 

DEAR  Miss  WEYLAND:  — 

Your  refusal  to  allow  my  father's  estate  to  restore  to  you,  so  far  as  it 
can,  the  money  which  it  took  from  you,  and  thus  to  right,  in  part,  a  grave 
wrong,  is  to  me  a  great  surprise  and  disappointment.  I  had  not  thought 
it  possible  that  you,  upon  due  reflection,  could  take  a  position  the  one  ob 
vious  effect  of  which  is  to  keep  a  son  permanently  under  the  shadow  of 
his  father's  dishonor. 


396  QUEED 

Do  not,  of  course,  misunderstand  me.  I  have  known  you  too  well  to 
believe  for  a  moment  that  you  can  be  swayed  by  ungenerous  motives.  I 
am  very  sure  that  you  are  taking  now  the  part  which  you  believe  most 
generous.  But  that  view  is,  I  assure  you,  so  far  from  the  real  facts  that  I 
can  only  conclude  that  you  have  refused  to  learn  what  these  facts  are. 
Both  legally  and  morally  the  money  is  yours.  No  one  else  on  earth  has 
a  shadow  of  claim  to  it.  I  most  earnestly  beg  that,  in  fairness  to  me,  you 
will  at  least  give  my  attorneys  the  chance  to  convince  yours  that  what  I 
write  here  is  true  and  unanswerable. 

Should  you  adhere  to  your  present  position,  the  money  will,  of  course, 
be  trusteed  for  your  benefit,  nor  will  a  penny  of  it  be  touched  until  it  is 
accepted,  if  not  by  you,  then  by  your  heirs  or  assigns.  But  I  cannot  be 
lieve  that  you  will  continue  to  find  magnanimity  in  shirking  your  just 
responsibilities,  and  denying  to  me  my  right  to  wipe  out  this  stain. 
Very  truly  yours, 

HENRY  G.  SURFACE,  Jr. 

No  answer  ever  came  to  this  letter,  and  there  the  matter 
rested  through  March  and  into  the  sultry  April. 


XXXI 

God  moves  in  a  Mysterious  Way:  how  the  Finished  Miss  Avery 
appears  as  the  Instrument  of  Providence;  how  Sharlee  sees 
her  Idol  of  Many  Years  go  toppling  in  the  Dust,  and  how  it 
is  her  Turn  to  meditate  in  the  Still  Watches. 

THE  print  danced  before  his  outraged  eyes ;  his  chest 
heaved  at  the  revolting  evidence  of  man's  duplicity; 
and  Charles  Gardiner  West  laid  down  his  morning's 
Post  with  a  hand  that  shook. 

Meachy  T.  Bangor  announces  his  candidacy  for- the  nomina 
tion  for  Mayor,  subject  to  the  Democratic  primary. 

For  West  had  not  a  moment's  uncertainty  as  to  what  this 
announcement  meant.  Meachy  T.  Bangor  spoke,  nay  in 
vented,  the  language  of  the  tribe.  He  was  elect  of  the  elect; 
what  the  silent  powers  that  were  thought  was  his  thought; 
their  ways  were  his  ways,  their  people  his  people.  When 
Meachy  T.  Bangor  announced  that  he  was  a  candidate  for  the 
nomination  for  Mayor,  it  meant  that  the  all-powerful  ma 
chine  had  already  nominated  him  for  Mayor,  and  whom 
the  organization  nominated  it  elected.  Meachy  T.  Bangor! 
Plonny  Neal's  young,  progressive  candidate  of  the  reformer 
type! 

Bitterness  flooded  West's  soul  when  he  thought  of  Plonny. 
Had  the  boss  been  grossly  deceived  or  grossly  deceiving? 
Could  that  honest  and  affectionate  eye,  whose  look  of  frank 
admiration  had  been  almost  embarrassing,  have  covered 
base  and  deliberate  treachery?  Was  it  possible  that  he,  West, 
who  had  always  been  confident  that  he  could  see  as  far  into  a 
millstone  as  another,  had  been  a  cheap  trickster's  easy  meat? 

Day  by  day,  since  the  appearance  of  the  reformatory  ar 
ticle,  West  had  waited  for  some  sign  of  appreciation  and  un 
derstanding  from  those  on  the  inside.  None  had  come.  Not 


398  QUEED 

a  soul  except  himself,  and  Plonny,  had  appeared  aware  that 
he,  by  a  masterly  compromise,  had  averted  disaster  from  the 
party,  and  clearly  revealed  himself  as  the  young  man  of  des 
tiny.  On  the  contrary,  the  House  spokesmen,  apparently  ut 
terly  blind  to  any  impending  crisis,  had,  in  the  closing  hours 
of  the  session,  voted  away  some  eighty  thousand  dollars  of 
the  hundred  thousand  rescued  by  West  from  the  reforma 
tory,  in  a  multiplication  of  offices  which  it  was  difficult  to 
regard  as  absolutely  indispensable  in  a  hard  times  year. 
This  action,  tallying  so  closely  with  what  his  former  assist 
ant  had  predicted,  had  bewildered  and  unsettled  West;  the 
continuing  silence  of  the  leaders  —  ''the  other  leaders,"  he 
had  found  himself  saying  —  had  led  him  into  anxious  spec 
ulations;  and  now,  in  a  staggering  burst,  the  disgraceful 
truth  was  revealed  to  him.  They  had  used  him,  tricked  and 
used  him  like  a  smooth  tool,  and  having  used  him,  had  de 
liberately  passed  him,  standing  fine  and  patient  in  the  line, 
to  throw  the  mantle  over  the  corrupt  and  unspeakable 
Bangor. 

By  heavens,  it  was  not  to  be  endured.  Was  it  for  this  that 
he  had  left  Blaines  College,  where  a  career  of  honorable  use 
fulness  lay  before  him ;  that  he  had  sacrificed  personal  wishes 
and  ambitions  to  the  insistent  statement  that  his  City  and 
State  had  need  of  him ;  that  he  had  stood  ten  months  in  the 
line  without  a  murmur;  and  that  at  last,  confronted  with  the 
necessity  of  choosing  between  the  wishes  of  his  personal  in 
timates  and  the  larger  good,  he  had  courageously  chosen  the 
latter  and  suffered  in  silence  the  suspicion  of  having  played 
false  with  the  best  friends  he  had  in  the  world?  Was  it  for 
this  that  he  had  lost  his  valuable  assistant,  whose  place  he 
could  never  hope  to  fill?  —  for  this  that  he  was  referred  to 
habitually  by  an  evening  contemporary  as  the  Plonny  Neal 
organ? 

He  was  thoroughly  disgusted  with  newspaper  work  this 
morning,  disgusted  with  the  line,  disgusted  with  hopeful  ef 
forts  to  uplift  the  people.  What  did  his  Post  work  really 
amount  to?  —  unremitting  toil,  the  ceaseless  forcing  up  of 


QUEED  399 

immature  and  insincere  opinions,  no  thanks  or  apprecia 
tion  anywhere,  and  at  the  end  the  designation  of  the  Plonny 
Neal  organ.  What  did  the  uplift  amount  to?  Could  progress 
really  ever  be  forced  a  single  inch?  And  why  should  he  wear 
out  his  life  in  the  selfless  service  of  those  who,  it  seemed, 
acknowledged  no  obligation  to  him?  As  for  public  life,  if  this 
was  a  sample,  the  less  he  saw  of  it  the  better.  He  would  take 
anything  in  the  world  sooner  than  a  career  of  hypocrisy, 
double-dealing  and  treachery,  of  dirty  looting  in  the  name  of 
the  public  good,  of  degrading  traffic  with  a  crew  of  liars  and 
confidence  men. 

But  through  all  the  young  man's  indignation  and  resent 
ment  there  ran  an  unsteadying  doubt,  a  miserable  doubt  o( 
himself.  Had  his  motives  in  the  reformatory  matter  been 
as  absolutely  spotless  as  he  had  charmed  himself  into  be 
lieving?  .  .  .  What  manner  of  man  was  he?  Did  he  really 
have  any  permanent  convictions  about  any  thing?  .  .  .  Was 
it  possible,  was  it  thinkable  or  conceivable,  that  he  was  a 
complaisant  invertebrate  whom  the  last  strong  man  that 
had  his  ear  could  play  upon  like  a  flute? 

West  passed  a  most  unhappy  morning.  But  at  lunch,  at 
the  club,  it  was  his  portion  to  have  his  buoyant  good-humor 
completely  restored  to  him.  He  fell  in  with  ancient  boon 
companions;  they  made  much  of  him;  involved  him  in  gay 
talk;  smoothed  him  down,  patted  him  on  the  head,  found 
his  self-esteem  for  him,  and  handed  it  over  in  its  pristine 
vigor.  Before  he  had  sat  half  an  hour  at  the  merry  table,  he 
could  look  back  at  his  profound  depression  of  the  morning 
with  smiling  wonder.  Where  in  the  world  had  he  gotten  his 
terrible  grouch?  Not  a  thing  in  the  world  had  happened, 
except  that  the  mayoralty  was  not  going  to  be  handed  to 
him  on  a  large  silver  platter.  Was  that  such  a  fearful  loss 
after  all?  On  the  contrary,  was  it  not  rather  a  good  rid 
dance?  Being  Mayor,  in  all  human  probability,  would  be  a 
horrible  bore. 

It  was  a  mild,  azure,  zephyrous  day,  spring  at  her  bright 
est  and  best.  West,  descending  the  club  steps,  sniffed  the 


400  QUEED 

fragrant  air  affectionately,  and  was  hanged  if  he  would  go 
near  the  office  on  such  an  afternoon.  Let  the  Post  readers 
plod  along  to-morrow  with  an  editorial  page  both  skimpy 
and  inferior;  anything  he  gave  them  would  still  be  too 
good  for  them,  middle-class  drabs  and  dullards  that  they 
were. 

The  big  red  automobile  was  old  now,  and  needed  paint, 
but  it  still  ran  staunch  and  true;  and  Miss  Avery  had  a 
face,  a  form,  and  a  sinuous  graceful  manner,  had  veils  and 
hats  and  sinuous  graceful  coats,  that  would  have  glorified 
a  far  less  worthy  vehicle.  And  she  drove  divinely.  By  in 
vitation  she  took  the  wheel  that  afternoon,  and  with  sure, 
clever  hands  whipped  the  docile  leviathan  over  the  hills 
and  far  away. 

The  world  knows  how  fate  uses  her  own  instruments  in 
her  own  way,  frequently  selecting  far  stranger  ones  than  the 
delightful  and  wealthy  Miss  Avery.  Now  for  more  than  a 
year  this  accomplished  girl  had  been  thinking  that  if  Charles 
Gardiner  West  had  anything  to  say  to  her,  it  was  high  time 
that  he  should  say  it.  If  she  had  not  set  herself  to  find  out 
what  was  hobbling  the  tongue  of  the  man  she  wanted,  she 
would  have  been  less  than  a  woman;  and  Miss  Avery  was 
a  good  deal  more.  Hence,  when  she  had  seen  West  with 
Sharlee  Weyland,  and  in  particular  on  the  last  two  or  three 
times  she  had  seen  West  with  Sharlee  Weyland,  she  had 
watched  his  manner  toward  that  lady  with  profound  mis 
givings,  of  the  sort  which  starts  every  true  woman  to  fight 
ing  for  her  own. 

Now  Miss  Avery  had  a  weapon,  in  the  shape  of  valuable 
knowledge,  or,  at  any  rate,  a  valuable  suspicion  that  had 
lately  reached  her:  the  suspicion,  in  short,  which  had  some 
how  crept  abroad  as  suspicions  will,  that  West  had  done  a 
certain  thing  which  another  man  was  supposed  to  have  done. 
Therefore,  when  they  turned  homeward  in  the  soft  dusk,  her 
man  having  been  brought  to  exactly  the  right  frame  of  mind, 
she  struck  with  her  most  languorous  voice. 

"How  is  that  dear  little  Charlotte  Weyland?  It  seems  to 


QUEED  401 

me  I  have  n't  seen  her  for  a  year,  though  it  was  positively 
only  last  week." 

"Oh!  She  seemed  very  well  when  I  saw  her  last." 

So  Mr.  West,  of  the  lady  he  was  going  to  marry.  For, 
though  he  had  never  had  just  the  right  opportunity  to  com 
plete  the  sweet  message  he  had  begun  at  the  Byrds'  one 
night,  his  mind  was  still  quite  made  up  on  that  point.  It 
was  true  that  the  atmosphere  of  riches  which  fairly  exuded 
from  the  girl  now  at  his  side  had  a  very  strong  appeal 
for  his  lower  instincts.  But  he  was  not  a  man  to  be  ridden 
by  his  lower  instincts.  No;  he  had  set  his  foot  upon  the 
fleshpots;  his  idealistic  nature  had  overcome  the  world. 

Miss  Avery,  sublimely  unaware  that  Mr.  West  was  going 
to  offer  marriage  to  her  rival  during  the  present  month, 
the  marriage  itself  to  take  place  in  October,  indolently  con 
tinued  :  — 

"To  my  mind  she's  quite  the  most  attractive  dear  little 
thing  in  town.  I  suppose  she's  quite  recovered  from  her  dis 
appointment  over  the  —  hospital,  or  whatever  it  was?" 

"Oh,  I  believe  so.  I  never  heard  her  mention  it  but  once." 

West's  pleasant  face  had  clouded  a  little.  Through  her 
fluttering  veil  she  noted  that  fact  with  distinct  satisfaction. 

"I  never  met  that  interesting  young  Mr.  Surface,"  said 
she,  sweeping  the  car  around  a  curve  in  the  white  road  and 
evading  five  women  in  a  surrey  with  polished  skill.  "  But  — 
truly,  I  have  found  myself  thinking  of  him  and  feeling  sorry 
for  him  more  than  once." 

"Sorry  for  him--  What  about?" 

"Oh,  haven't  you  heard,  then?  It's  rather  mournful. 
You  see,  when  Charlotte  Weyland  found  out  that  he  had 
written  a  certain  editorial  in  the  Post  —  you  know  more 
about  this  part  of  it  than  I  — " 

"But  he  did  n't  write  it,"  said  West,  unhesitatingly.  "I 
wrote  it  myself." 

"You?" 

She  looked  at  him  with  frank  surprise  in  her  eyes;  not  too 
much  frank  surprise;  rather  as  one  who  feels  much  but  en- 


402  QUEED 

deavors  to  suppress  it  for  courtesy's  sake.  "Forgive  me  —  I 
did  n't  know.  There  has  been  a  little  horrid  gossip  —  but  of 
course  nearly  every  one  has  thought  that  he  — " 

"I'm  sure  I'm  not  responsible  for  what  people  think," 
said  West,  a  little  aggressively,  but  with  a  strangely  sinking 
heart.  "There  has  been  not  the  slightest  mystery  or  attempt 
at  concealment  — " 

"Oh!  Then  of  course  Charlotte  knows  all  about  it  now?" 

"I  don't  know  whether  she  does  or  not.  When  I  tried  to 
tell  her  the  whole  story,"  explained  West,  "soon  after  the 
incident  occurred,  she  was  so  agitated  about  it,  the  subject 
seemed  so  painful  to  her,  that  I  was  forced  to  give  it  up.  You 
can  understand  my  position.  Ever  since,  I  have  been  waiting 
for  an  opportunity  to  take  her  quietly  and  straighten  out 
the  whole  matter  for  her  in  a  calm  and  rational  way.  For 
her  part  she  has  evidently  regarded  the  subject  as  happily 
closed.  Why  under  heaven  should  I  press  it  upon  her  — 
merely  to  gain  the  academic  satisfaction  of  convincing  her 
that  the  Post  acted  on  information  superior  and  judgment 
sounder  than  her  own?" 

Miss  Avery,  now  devoting  herself  to  her  chauffeur's  du 
ties  through  a  moment  of  silence,  was  no  match  for  Mr.  West 
at  the  game  of  ethical  debate,  and  knew  it.  However,  she 
held  a  very  strong  card  in  her  pongee  sleeve,  and  she  knew 
that  too. 

"  I  see  —  of  course.  You  know  I  think  you  have  been  quite 
right  through  it  all.  And  yet  —  you  won't  mind?  —  I  can't 
help  feeling  sorry  for  Mr.  Surface." 

"Very  well  —  you  most  mysterious  lady.  Go  on  and  tell 
me  why  you  can't  help  feeling  sorry  for  Mr.  Surface." 

Miss  Avery  told  him.  How  she  knew  anything  about  the 
private  affairs  of  Mr.  Surface  and  Miss  Weyland,  of  which  it 
is  certain  that  neither  of  them  had  ever  spoken,  is  a  mys 
tery,  indeed :  but  Gossip  is  Argus  and  has  a  thousand  ears  to 
boot.  Miss  Avery  was  careful  to  depict  Sharlee's  attitude 
toward  the  unfortunate  Mr.  Surface  as  just  severe  enough 
to  suggest  to  West  that  he  must  act  at  once,  and  not  so 


QUEED  403 

severe  as  to  suggest  to  him  —  conceivably  —  the  desir 
ability,  from  a  selfish  point  of  view,  of  not  acting  at  all.  It 
was  a  task  for  a  diplomat,  which  is  to  say  a  task  for  a  Miss 
Avery. 

"Rather  fine  of  him,  was  n't  it,  to  assume  all  the  blame? 
—  particularly  if  it's  true,  as  people  say,"  concluded  Miss 
Avery,  "that  the  man's  in  love  with  her  and  she  cares  no 
thing  for  him." 

"Fine  —  splendid  —  but  entirely  unnecessary,"  said 
West. 

The  little  story  had  disturbed  him  greatly.  He  had  had  no 
knowledge  of  any  developments  between  Sharlee  and  his 
former  assistant ;  and  now  he  was  unhappily  conscious  that 
he  ought  to  have  spoken  weeks  ago. 

"I'm  awfully  sorry  to  hear  this,"  he  resumed,  "for  I  am 
much  attached  to  that  boy.  Still  —  if,  as  you  say,  every 
thing  is  all  right  now  — " 

"  Oh,  but  I  don't  know  at  all  that  it  is,"  said  Miss  Avery, 
hastily.  "That  is  just  the  point.  The  last  I  heard  of  it,  she 
had  forbidden  him  her  house." 

"That  won't  do,"  said  Charles  Gardiner  West,  in  a  burst 
of  generosity.  "I'll  clear  up  that  difficulty  before  I  sleep 
to-night." 

And  he  was  as  good  as  his  word,  or,  let  us  say,  almost  as 
good.  The  next  night  but  one  he  called  upon  Sharlee  Wey- 
land  with  two  unalterable  purposes  in  his  mind.  One  was  to 
tell  her  the  full  inside  history  of  the  reformatory  article  from 
the  beginning.  The  other  was  to  notify  her  in  due  form  that 
she  held  his  heart  in  permanent  captivity. 

To  Miss  Avery,  it  made  not  the  slightest  difference  whether 
the  gifted  and  charming  editor  of  the  Post  sold  out  his  prin 
ciples  for  a  price  every  morning  in  the  month.  At  his  pleas 
ure  he  might  fracture  all  of  the  decalogue  that  was  refinedly 
fracturable,  and  so  long  as  he  rescued  his  social  position 
intact  from  the  ruin,  he  was  her  man  just  the  same.  But 
she  had  an  instinct,  surer  than  reasoned  wisdom,  that  Shar 
lee  Weyland  viewed  these  matters  differently.  Therefore 


404  QUEED 

she  had  sent  West  to  make  his  little  confession,  face  to  face. 
And  therefore  West,  after  an  hour  of  delightful  tete-a-t£te 
in  the  charming  little  back  parlor,  stiffened  himself  up,  his 
brow  sicklying  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  disagreeable 
thought,  and  began  to  make  it. 

"I've  got  to  tell  you  something  about  —  a  subject  that 
won't  be  welcome  to  you,"  he  plunged  in,  rather  lugubri 
ously.  "  I  mean  —  the  reformatory." 

Sharlee's  face,  which  had  been  merry  and  sweet,  instantly 
changed  and  quieted  at  that  word  ;  interest  sprang  full- 
armed  in  her  deep  blue  eyes. 

"  Have  you?  Tell  me  anything  about  it  you  wish." 

"You  remember  that  —  last  editorial  in  the  Post?'' 

"Do  you  think  that  I  forget  so  easily?" 

West  hardly  liked  that  reply.  Nor  had  he  ever  supposed 
that  he  would  find  the  subject  so  difficult. 

"Well!  I  was  surprised  and  —  hurt  to  learn  — recently  — 
that  you  had  —  well,  had  been  rather  severe  with  Surface, 
under  the  impression  that  —  the  full  responsibility  for  that 
article  was  his." 

Sharlee  sat  in  the  same  flowered  arm-chair  she  had  once 
occupied  to  put  this  same  Surface,  then  known  as  little  Dr. 
Queed,  in  his  place.  Her  heart  warmed  to  West  for  his  gen 
erous  impulse  to  intercede.  Still,  she  hardly  conceived  that 
her  treatment  of  Mr.  Surface  was  any  concern  of  Mr.  West's. 

"And  so?" 

"I  must  tell  you,"  he  said,  oddly  uneasy  under  her 
straightforward  look,  "that  —  that  you  have  made  a  mis 
take.  The  responsibility  is  mine." 

"Ah,  you  mean  that  you,  as  the  editor,  are  willing  to  take 
it." 

"No,"  said  West  —  "no  " ;  and  then  suddenly  he  felt  like 
a  rash  suicide,  repentant  at  the  last  moment.  Already  the 
waters  were  rushing  over  his  head ;  he  felt  a  wild  impulse  to 
clutch  at  the  life-belt  she  had  flung  out  to  him.  It  is  to  be 
remembered  to  his  credit  that  he  conquered  it.  "No,  —  I 
—  I  wrote  the  article  myself." 


QUEED  405 

"You?" 

Her  monosyllable  had  been  Miss  Avery's,  but  there  re 
semblance  parted.  Sharlee  sat  still  in  her  chair,  and  pre 
sently  her  lashes  fluttered  and  fell.  To  West's  surprise,  a 
beautiful  color  swept  upward  from  her  throat  to  drown  in  her 
rough  dark  hair.  "Oh,"  said  she,  under  her  breath,  "I'm 
glad  —  so  glad!'1 

West  heaved  a  great  sigh  of  relief.  It  was  all  over,  and  she 
was  glad.  Had  n't  he  known  all  along  that  a  woman  will 
always  forgive  everything  in  the  man  she  loves?  She  was 
glad  because  he  had  told  her  when  another  man  might  have 
kept  silent.  And  yet  her  look  perplexed  him ;  her  words  per 
plexed  him.  Undoubtedly  she  must  have  something  more  to 
say  than  a  mere  expression  of  vague  general  gladness  over 
the  situation. 

"Need  I  say  that  I  never  intended  there  should  be  any 
doubt  about  the  matter?  I  meant  to  explain  it  all  to  you  long 
ago,  only  there  never  seemed  to  be  any  suitable  opportun- 
ity." 

Sharlee's  color  died  away.  In  silence  she  raised  her  eyes 
and  looked  at  him. 

"I  started  to  tell  you  all  about  it  once,  at  the  time,  but 
you  know,"  he  said,  with  a  little  nervous  laugh,  "you  seemed 
to  find  the  subject  so  extremely  painful  then  —  that  I 
thought  I  had  better  wait  till  you  could  look  at  it  more 
calmly." 

Still  she  said  nothing,  but  only  sat  still  in  her  chair  and 
looked  at  him. 

"I  shall  always  regret,"  continued  West,  laboriously, 
"  that  my —  silence,  which  I  assure  you  I  meant  in  kindness, 
should  have  —  Why  do  you  look  at  me  that  way,  Miss 
Weyland?"  he  said,  with  a  quick  change  of  voice.  "I  don't 
understand  you." 

Sharlee  gave  a  small  start  and  said:  "Was  I  looking  at 
you  in  any  particular  way?" 

"You  looked  as  mournful,"  said  West,  with  that  same  little 
laugh,  "as  though  you  had  lost  your  last  friend.  Now — " 


406  QUEED 

"No,  not  my  last  one,"  said  Sharlee. 

"Well,  don't  look  so  sad  about  it,"  he  said,  in  a  voice  of 
affectionate  raillery.  "I  am  quite  unhappy  enough  over  it 
without  — " 

"I'm  afraid  I  can't  help  you  to  feel  happier  —  not  to 
night.  If  I  look  sad,  you  see,  it  is  because  I  feel  that  way." 

"Sad?"  he  echoed,  bewildered.  "Why  should  you  be  sad 
now  —  when  it  is  all  going  to  be  straightened  out  — 
when—" 

"Well,  don't  you  think  it's  pretty  sad  —  the  part  that 
can't  ever  be  straightened  out?" 

Unexpectedly  she  got  up,  and  walked  slowly  away,  a  dis 
concerting  trick  she  had ;  wandered  about  the  room,  looking 
about  her  something  like  a  stranger  in  a  picture  gallery; 
touching  a  bowl  of  flowers  here,  there  setting  a  book  to 
rights ;  and  West,  rising  too,  following  her  sombrely  with  his 
eyes,  had  never  wanted  her  so  much  in  all  his  life. 

Presently  she  returned  to  him ;  asked  him  to  sit  down 
again;  and,  still  standing  herself,  began  speaking  in  a  quiet 
kind  voice  which,  nevertheless,  rang  ominously  in  his  ears 
from  her  first  word. 

"I  remember,"  said  Sharlee,  "when  I  was  a  very  little 
girl,  not  more  than  twelve  years  old,  I  think,  I  first  heard 
about  you  —  about  Charles  Gardiner  West.  You  were 
hardly  grown  then,  but  already  people  were  talking  about 
you.  I  don't  remember  now,  of  course,  just  what  they  said, 
but  it  must  have  been  something  very  splendid,  for  I 
remember  the  sort  of  picture  I  got.  I  have  always  liked  for 
men  to  be  very  clean  and  high-minded  —  I  think  because  my 
father  was  that  sort  of  man.  I  have  put  that  above  intel 
lect,  and  abilities,  and  what  would  be  called  attractions;  and 
so  what  they  said  about  you  made  a  great  impression  on  me. 
You  know  how  very  young  girls  are  —  how  they  like  to  have 
the  figure  of  a  prince  to  spin  their  little  romances  around  .  .  . 
and  so  I  took  you  for  mine.  You  were  my  knight  without  fear 
and  without  reproach  ...  Sir  Galahad.  When  I  was  six 
teen,  I  used  to  pass  you  in  the  street  and  wonder  if  you 


QUEED  407 

did  n't  hear  my  heart  thumping.  You  never  looked  at  me; 
you  had  n't  any  idea  who  I  was.  And  that  is  a  big  and  fine 
thing,  I  think  —  to  be  the  hero  of  somebody  you  don't  even 
know  by  name  .  .  .  though  of  course  not  so  big  and  fine  as 
to  be  the  hero  of  somebody  who  knows  you  very  well.  And 
you  were  that  to  me,  too.  When  I  grew  up  and  came  to 
know  you,  I  still  kept  you  on  that  pedestal  you  never  saw. 
I  measured  you  by  the  picture  I  had  carried  for  so  many 
years,  and  I  was  not  disappointed.  All  that  my  little  girl's 
fancy  had  painted  you,  you  seemed  to  be.  I  look  back  now 
over  the  last  few  years  of  my  life,  and  so  much  that  I  have 
liked  most  —  that  has  been  dearest  —  has  centred  about 
you.  Yes,  more  than  once  I  have  been  quite  sure  that  I  ... 
was  in  love  with  you.  You  wonder  that  I  can  show  you  my 
heart  this  wa}'?  I  couldn't  of  course,  except  —  well  —  that 
it  is  all  past  now.  And  that  is  what  seems  sad  to  me.  .  .  . 
There  never  was  any  prince;  my  knight  is  dead;  and  Sir 
Galahad  I  got  out  of  a  book.  .  .  .  Don't  you  think  that  that 
is  pretty  sad?" 

West,  who  had  been  looking  at  her  with  a  kind  of  fright 
ened  fascination,  hastily  averted  his  eyes,  for  he  saw  that 
her  own  had  suddenly  filled  with  tears.  She  turned  away 
from  him  again ;  a  somewhat  painful  silence  ensued ;  and  pre 
sently  she  broke  it,  speaking  in  a  peculiarly  gentle  voice,  and 
not  looking  at  him. 

"I'm  glad  that  you  told  me  —  at  last.  I'll  be  glad  to 
remember  that  .  .  .  and  I 'm  always  your  friend.  But  don't 
you  think  that  perhaps  we  'd  better  finish  our  talk  some  other 
time?" 

"No,"  said  West.   "No." 

He  pulled  himself  together,  struggling  desperately  to 
throw  off  the  curious  benumbing  inertia  that  was  settling 
down  upon  him.  "You  are  doing  me  an  injustice.  A  most 
tremendous  injustice.  You  have  misunderstood  everything 
from  the  beginning.  I  must  explain  — " 

"Don't  you  think  that  argument  will  only  make  it  all  so 
much  worse?" 


408  QUEED 

"Nothing  could  possibly  be  worse  for  me  than  to  have  you 
think  of  me  and  speak  to  me  in  this  way." 

Obediently  she  sat  down,  her  face  still  and  sad;  and  West, 
pausing  a  moment  to  marshal  his  thoughts  into  convincing 
form,  launched  forth  upon  his  defense. 

From  the  first  he  felt  that  he  did  not  make  a  success  of  it ; 
was  not  doing  himself  justice.  Recent  events,  in  the  legisla 
ture  and  with  reference  to  Meachy  T.  Bangor,  had  greatly 
weakened  his  confidence  in  his  arguments.  Even  to  himself 
he  seemed  to  have  been  strangely  "easy";  his  exposition 
sounded  labored  and  hollow  in  his  own  ears.  But  worse 
than  this  was  the  bottomless  despondency  into  which  the 
girl's  brief  autobiography  had  strangely  cast  him.  A  vast 
mysterious  depression  had  closed  over  him,  which  entirely 
robbed  him  of  his  usual  adroit  felicity  of  speech.  He  brought 
his  explanation  up  to  the  publication  of  the  unhappy  article, 
and  there  abruptly  broke  off. 

A  long  silence  followed  his  ending,  and  at  last  Sharlee 
said :  — 

"I  suppose  a  sudden  change  of  heart  in  the  middle  of  a 
fight  is  always  an  unhappy  thing.  It  always  means  a  good 
deal  of  pain  for  somebody.  Still  —  sometimes  they  must 
come,  and  when  they  do,  I  suppose  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to 
meet  them  honestly  —  though,  personally,  I  think  I  should 
always  trust  my  heart  against  my  head.  But  .  .  .  if  you  had 
only  come  to  us  that  first  morning  and  frankly  explained 
just  why  you  deserted  us  —  if  you  had  told  us  all  this  that 
you  have  just  told  me  — " 

"That  is  exactly  what  I  wanted  and  intended  to  do,"  in 
terrupted  West.  "I  kept  silent  out  of  regard  for  you." 

"Out  of  regard  for  me?" 

"When  I  started  to  tell  you  all  about  it,  that  night  at 
Mrs.  Byrd's,  it  seemed  to  me  that  you  had  brooded  over  the 
matter  until  you  had  gotten  in  an  overwrought  and  —  over 
strung  condition  about  it.  It  seemed  to  me  the  considerate 
thing  not  to  force  the  unwelcome  topic  upon  you,  but  rather 
to  wait— " 


QUEED  409 

"But  had  you  the  right  to  consider  my  imaginary  feelings 
in  such  a  matter  between  yourself  and  .  .  .  ?  And  besides, 
you  did  not  quite  keep  silent,  you  remember.  You  said 
something  that  led  me  to  think  that  you  had  discharged  Mr. 
Surface  for  writing  that  article." 

"  I  did  not  intend  you  to  think  anything  of  the  kind.  Any 
thing  in  the  least  like  that.  If  my  words  were  ambiguous,  it 
was  because,  seeing,  as  I  say,  that  you  were  in  an  overstrung 
condition,  I  thought  it  best  to  let  the  whole  matter  rest  until 
you  could  look  at  it  calmly  and  rationally." 

She  made  no  reply. 

"But  why  dwell  on  that  part  of  it?"  said  West,  beseech 
ingly.  "It  was  simply  a  wretched  misunderstanding  all 
around.  I  'm  sorrier  than  I  can  tell  you  for  my  part  in  it.  I 
have  been  greatly  to  blame  —  I  can  see  that  now.  Can't  you 
let  bygones  be  bygones?  I  have  come  to  you  voluntarily  and 
told  you  — " 

"Yes,  after  six  weeks.  Why,  I  was  the  best  friend  he  had, 
Mr.  West,  and  —  Oh,  me!  How  can  I  bear  to  remember 
what  I  said  to  him!" 

She  turned  her  face  hurriedly  away  from  him.  West, 
much  moved,  struggled  on. 

"  But  don't  you  see  —  I  did  n't  know  it!  I  never  dreamed 
of  such  a  thing.  The  moment  I  heard  how  matters  stood  — " 

"  Did  it  never  occur  to  you  in  all  this  time  that  it  might  be 
assumed  that  Mr.  Surface,  having  written  all  the  reforma 
tory  articles,  had  written  this  one?" 

"  I  did  not  think  of  that.  I  was  short-sighted,  I  own.  And 
of  course,"  he  added  more  eagerly,  "  I  supposed  that  he  had 
told  you  himself." 

"You  don't  know  him,"  said  Sharlee. 

A  proud  and  beautiful  look  swept  over  her  face.  West 
rose,  looking  wretchedly  unhappy,  and  stood,  irresolute, 
facing  her. 

"Can't  you  —  forgive  me?"  he  asked  presently,  in  a 
painful  voice. 

Sharlee  hesitated. 


410  QUEED 

"Don't  you  know  I  said  that  it  would  only  make  things 
worse  to  talk  about  it  to-night?"  she  said  gently.  "Every 
thing  you  say  seems  to  put  us  further  and  further  apart. 
Why,  there  is  nothing  for  me  to  forgive,  Mr.  West.  There 
was  a  situation,  and  it  imposed  a  certain  conduct  on  you ; 
that  is  the  whole  story.  I  don't  come  into  it  at  all.  It  is  all  a 
matter  between  you  and  —  your  own  — " 

"You  do  forgive  me  then?  But  no  —  you  talk  to  me  just 
as  though  you  had  learned  all  this  from  somebody  else  —  as 
though  I  had  not  come  to  you  voluntarily  and  told  you 
everything." 

Sharlee  did  not  like  to  look  at  his  face,  which  she  had 
always  seen  before  so  confident  and  gay. 

"No,"  said  she  sadly  —  "for  I  am  still  your  friend." 

"Friend!" 

He  echoed  the  word  wildly,  contemptuously.  He  was  just 
on  the  point  of  launching  into  a  passionate  speech,  painting 
the  bitterness  of  friendship  to  one  who  must  have  true  love 
or  nothing,  and  flinging  his  hand  and  his  heart  impetuously 
at  her  feet.  But  looking  at  her  still  face,  he  checked  him 
self,  and  just  in  time.  Shaken  by  passion  as  he  was,  he  was 
yet  enough  himself  to  understand  that  she  would  not  listen 
to  him.  Why  should  he  play  the  spendthrift  and  the  wan 
ton  with  his  love?  Why  give  her,  for  nothing,  the  sterile 
satisfaction  of  rejecting  him,  for  her  to  prize,  as  he  knew 
girls  did,  as  merely  one  more  notch  upon  her  gun? 

Leaving  his  tempestuous  exclamation  hanging  in  mid-air, 
West  stiffly  shook  Sharlee's  hand  and  walked  blindly  out  of 
the  room. 

He  went  home,  and  to  bed,  like  one  moving  in  a  horrible 
dream.  That  night,  and  through  all  the  next  day,  he  felt 
utterly  bereft  and  wretched :  something,  say,  as  though  flood 
and  pestilence  had  swept  through  his  dear  old  town  and  car 
ried  off  everything  and  everybody  but  himself.  He  crawled 
alone  in  a  smashed  world.  On  the  second  day  following,  he 
found  himself  able  to  light  a  cigarette;  and,  glancing  about 
him  with  faint  pluckings  of  convalescent  interest,  began  to 


QUEED  411 

recognize  some  landmarks.  On  the  third  day,  he  was 
frankty  wondering  whether  a  girl  with  such  overstrained, 
not  to  say  hysterical  ideals  of  conduct,  would,  after  all,  be  a 
very  comfortable  person  to  spend  one's  life  with. 

On  the  evening  of  this  day,  about  half-past  eight  o'clock, 
he  emerged  from  his  mother's  house,  light  overcoat  over  his 
arm  in  deference  to  his  evening  clothes,  and  started  briskly 
down  the  street.  On  the  second  block,  as  luck  had  it,  he 
overtook  Tommy  Semple  walking  the  same  way. 

"Gardiner,"  said  Semple,  "when  are  you  going  to  get  over 
all  this  uplift  rot  and  come  back  to  Semple  and  West?" 

The  question  fell  in  so  marvelously  with  West's  mood  of 
acute  discontent  with  all  that  his  life  had  been  for  the  past 
two  years,  that  it  looked  to  him  strangely  like  Providence. 
The  easy  ways  of  commerce  appeared  vastly  alluring  to  him ; 
his  income,  to  say  truth,  had  suffered  sadly  in  the  cause  of  the 
public;  never  had  the  snug  dollars  drawn  him  so  strongly. 
He  gave  a  slow,  curious  laugh. 

"Why,  hang  it,  Tommy!  I  don't  know  but  I  'm  ready  to 
listen  to  your  siren  spiel  —  now!" 

In  the  darkness  Semple's  eyes  gleamed.  His  receipts  had 
never  been  so  good  since  West  left  him. 

"That 's  the  talk !  I  need  you  in  my  business,  old  boy.  By 
the  bye,  you  can  come  in  at  bully  advantage  if  you  can 
move  right  away.  I'm  going  to  come  talk  with  you  to 
morrow." 

"Right's  the  word,"  said  West. 

At  the  end  of  that  block  a  large  house  stood  in  a  lawn,  half 
hidden  from  the  street  by  a  curtain  of  trees.  From  its  con 
cealed  veranda  came  a  ripple  of  faint,  slow  laughter,  adver 
tising  the  presence  of  charming  society.  West  halted. 

"Here's  a  nice  house,  Tommy;  I  think  I'll  look  in.  See 
you  to-morrow." 

Semple,  walking  on,  glanced  back  to  see  what  house  it 
was.  It  proved  to  be  the  brownstone  palace  leased  for 
three  years  by  old  Mr.  Avery,  formerly  of  Mauch  Chunk  but 
now  of  Ours. 


412  QUEED 

Sharlee,  too,  retired  from  her  painful  interview  with  West 
with  a  sense  of  irreparable  loss.  Her  idol  of  so  many  years 
had,  at  a  word,  toppled  off  into  the  dust,  and  not  all  the  king's 
horses  could  ever  get  him  back  again.  It  was  like  a  death  to 
her,  and  in  most  ways  worse  than  a  death. 

She  lay  awake  a  long  time  that  night,  thinking  of  the  two 
men  who,  for  she  could  not  say  how  long,  had  equally  shared 
first  place  in  her  thoughts.  And  gradually  she  read  them 
both  anew  by  the  blaze  lit  by  one  small  incident. 

She  could  not  believe  that  West  was  deliberately  false ;  she 
was  certain  that  he  was  not  deliberately  false.  But  she  saw 
now,  as  by  a  sudden  searchlight  flung  upon  him,  that  her 
one-time  paladin  had  a  fatal  weakness.  He  could  not  be 
honest  with  himself.  He  could  believe  anything  that  he 
wanted  to  believe.  He  could  hypnotize  himself  at  will  by 
the  enchanting  music  of  his  own  imaginings.  He  had  pretty 
graces  and  he  told  himself  they  were  large,  fine  abilities ;  dim 
emotions  and  he  thought  they  were  ideals;  vague  gropings 
of  ambition,  and  when  he  had  waved  the  hands  of  his  fancy 
over  them,  presto,  they  had  become  great  dominating  pur 
poses.  He  had  fluttered  fitfully  from  business  to  Blaines 
College ;  from  the  college  to  the  Post;  before  long  he  would 
flutter  on  from  the  Post  to  something  else  —  always  falling 
short,  always  secretly  disappointed,  everywhere  a  failure 
as  a  man,  though  few  might  know  it  but  himself.  West's 
trouble,  in  fact,  was  that  he  was  not  a  man  at  all.  He  was 
weakest  where  a  real  man  is  strongest.  He  was  merely  a 
chameleon  taking  his  color  from  whatever  he  happened  to 
light  upon ;  a  handsome  boat  which  could  never  get  any 
where  because  it  had  no  rudder;  an  ornamental  butterfly 
driving  aimlessly  before  the  nearest  breeze.  He  meant  well, 
in  a  general  way,  but  his  good  intentions  proved  descending 
paving-stones  because  he  was  constitutionally  incapable  of 
meaning  anything  very  hard. 

West  had  had  everything  in  the  beginning  except  money ; 
and  he  had  the  faculty  of  making  all  of  that  he  wanted. 
Queed  —  she  found  that  name  still  clinging  to  him  in  her 


QUEED  413 

thoughts  —  had  had  nothing  in  the  beginning  except  his 
fearless  honesty.  In  everything  else  that  a  man  should  be, 
he  had  seemed  to  her  painfully  destitute.  But  because 
through  everything  he  had  held  unflinchingly  to  his  honesty, 
he  had  been  steadily  climbing  the  heights.  He  had  passed 
West  long  ago,  because  their  faces  were  set  in  opposite  di 
rections.  West  had  had  the  finest  distinctions  of  honor  care 
fully  instilled  into  him  from  his  birth.  Queed  had  deduced 
his,  raw,  from  his  own  unswerving  honesty.  And  the  first 
acid  test  of  a  real  situation  showed  that  West's  honor  was 
only  burnished  and  decorated  dross,  while  Queed 's,  which 
he  had  made  himself,  was  as  fine  gold.  In  that  test,  all  super 
ficial  trappings  were  burned  and  shriveled  away ;  men  were 
made  to  show  their  men's  colors;  and  the  "queer  little  man 
with  the  queer  little  name"  had  instantly  cast  off  his  re 
splendent  superior  because  contact  with  his  superior's  dis 
honesty  was  degrading  to  him.  Yet  in  the  same  breath,  he 
had  allowed  his  former  chief  to  foist  off  that  dishonesty  upon 
his  own  clean  shoulders,  and  borne  the  detestable  burden 
without  demand  for  sympathy  or  claim  for  gratitude.  And 
this  was  the  measure  of  how,  as  Queed  had  climbed  by  his 
honesty,  his  whole  nature  had  been  strengthened  and  refined. 
For  if  he  had  begun  as  the  most  unconscious  and  merciless 
of  egoists,  who  could  sacrifice  little  Fifi  to  his  comfort  with 
out  a  tremor,  he  had  ended  with  the  supreme  act  of  purest 
altruism:  the  voluntary  sacrifice  of  himself  to  save  a  man 
whom  in  his  heart  he  must  despise. 

But  was  that  the  supreme  altruism?  What  had  it  cost 
him,  after  all,  but  her  friendship?  Perhaps  he  did  not  regard 
that  as  so  heavy  a  price  to  pay. 

Sharlee  turned  her  face  to  the  wall.  In  the  darkness,  she 
felt  the  color  rising  at  her  throat  and  sweeping  softly  but 
resistlessly  upward.  And  she  found  herself  feverishly  cling 
ing  to  all  that  her  little  Doctor  had  said,  and  looked,  in  all 
their  meetings  which,  remembered  now,  gave  her  the  right 
to  think  that  their  parting  had  been  hard  for  him,  too. 

Yet  it  was  not  upon  their  parting  that  her  mind  busied 


414  QUEED 

itself  most,  but  upon  thoughts  of  their  remeeting.  The  rela 
tions  which  she  had  thought  to  exist  between  them  had,  it 
was  clear,  been  violently  reversed.  The  one  point  now  was 
for  her  to  meet  the  topsy-turveyed  situation  as  swiftly,  as 
generously,  and  as  humbly  as  was  possible. 

If  she  had  been  a  man,  she  would  have  gone  to  him  at 
once,  hunted  him  up  this  very  night,  and  told  him  in  the 
most  groveling  language  at  her  command,  how  infinitely 
sorry  and  ashamed  she  was.  Lying  wide-eyed  in  her  little 
white  bed,  she  composed  a  number  of  long  speeches  that 
she,  as  a  man,  would  have  made  to  him;  embarrassing 
speeches  which  he,  as  a  man,  or  any  other  man  that  ever 
lived,  would  never  have  endured  fora  moment.  But  she  was 
not  a  man,  she  was  a  girl ;  and  girls  were  not  allowed  to  go  to 
men,  and  frankly  and  honestly  say  what  was  in  their 
hearts.  She  was  not  in  the  least  likely  to  meet  him  by  acci 
dent;  the  telephone  was  unthinkable.  There  remained  only 
to  write  him  a  letter. 

Yes,  but  what  to  say  in  the  letter?  There  was  the  critical 
and  crucial  question.  No  matter  how  artful  and  cajol 
ing  an  apology  she  wrote,  she  knew  exactly  how  he  would 
treat  it.  He  would  write  a  civil,  formal  reply,  assuring  her 
that  her  apology  was  accepted,  and  there  the  matter  would 
stand  forever.  For  she  had  put  herself  terribly  in  the  wrong ; 
she  had  betrayed  a  damning  weakness;  it  was  extremely  pro 
bable  that  he  would  never  care  to  resume  friendship  with 
one  who  had  proved  herself  so  hatefully  mistrustful.  Then, 
too,  he  was  evidently  very  angry  with  her  about  the  money. 
Only  by  meeting  for  a  long,  frank  talk  could  she  ever  hope 
to  make  things  right  again;  but  not  to  save  her  life  could 
she  think  of  any  form  of  letter  which  would  bring  such  a 
meeting  to  pass. 

Pondering  the  question,  she  fell  asleep.  All  next  day,  when 
ever  she  had  a  minute  and  sometimes  when  she  did  not,  she 
pondered  it,  and  the  next,  and  the  next.  Her  heart  smote 
her  for  the  tardiness  of  her  reparation ;  but  stronger  than  this 
was  her  fear  of  striking  and  missing  fire.  And  at  last  an  idea 


QUEED  415 

came  to  her;  an  idea  so  big  and  beautiful  that  it  first  startled 
and  dazzled  her,  and  then  set  her  heart  to  singing;  the  per 
fect  idea  which  would  blot  away  the  whole  miserable  mess  at 
one  stroke.  She  sat  down  and  wrote  Mr.  Surface  five  lines, 
asking  him  to  be  kind  enough  to  call  upon  her  in  regard  to 
the  business  matter  about  which  he  had  written  her  a  few 
weeks  before. 

She  wrote  this  note  from  her  house,  one  night;  she  ex 
pected,  of  course,  that  he  would  come  there  to  see  her;  she 
had  planned  out  exactly  where  they  were  each  to  sit,  and  even 
large  blocks  of  their  conversation.  But  the  very  next  morn 
ing,  before  10  o'clock,  there  came  a  knock  upon  the  Depart 
mental  door  and  he  walked  into  her  office,  looking  more  mat 
ter-of-fact  and  business-like  than  she  had  ever  seen  him. 


XXXII 

Second  Meeting  between  a  Citizen  and  the  Great  Pleasure-Dog 
Behemoth,  involving  Plans  for  Two  New  Homes. 

AND  this  time  they  did  not  have  to  go  into  the  hall  to 
talk. 
No  sooner  had  the  opening  door  revealed  the  face 
of  young  Mr.  Surface  than  Mr.  Dayne,  the  kind-faced  Secre 
tary,  reached  hastily  for  his  hat.    In  the  same  breath  with 
his  "  Come  in  "  and  "  Good-morning,"  he  was  heard  to  men 
tion  to  the  Assistant  Secretary  something  about  a  little  urgent 
business  downtown. 

Mr.  Dayne  acted  so  promptly  that  he  met  the  visitor  on 
the  very  threshold  of  the  office.  The  clergyman  held  out  his 
hand  with  a  light  in  his  manly  gray  eye. 

"I'm  sincerely  glad  to  see  you,  Mr.  Queed,  to  have  the 
chance — " 

"Surface,  please." 

Mr.  Dayne  gave  his  hand  an  extra  wring.  "Mr.  Surface, 
you  did  a  splendid  thing.  I  'm  glad  of  this  chance  to  tell  you 
so,  and  to  beg  your  forgiveness  for  having  done  you  a  grave 
injustice  in  my  thoughts." 

The  young  man  stared  at  him.  "  I  have  nothing  to  forgive 
you  for,  Mr.  Dayne.  In  fact,  I  have  no  idea  what  you  are 
talking  about." 

But  Mr.  Dayne  did  not  enlighten  him;  in  fact  he  was 
already  walking  briskly  down  the  hall.  Clearly  the  man  had 
business  that  would  not  brook  an  instant's  delay. 

Hat  in  hand,  the  young  man  turned,  plainly  puzzled,  and 
found  himself  looking  at  a  white-faced  little  girl  who  gave 
back  his  look  with  brave  steadiness. 

"  Do  you  think  you  can  forgive  me,  too?  "  she  asked  in  a 
very  small  voice. 


QUEED  417 

He  came  three  steps  forward,  into  the  middle  of  the  room, 
and  there  halted  dead,  staring  at  her  with  a  look  of  searching 
inquiry. 

"I  don't  understand  this, "he  said,  in  his  controlled  voice. 
"What  are  you  talking  about?" 

"Mr.  West,"  said  Sharlee,  "has  told  me  all  about  it. 
About  the  reformatory.  And  I'm  sorry." 

There  she  stuck.  Of  all  the  speeches  of  prostrate  yet  some 
how  noble  self-flagellation  which  in  the  night  seasons  she  had 
so  beautifully  polished,  not  one  single  word  could  she  now 
recall.  Yet  she  continued  to  meet  his  gaze,  for  so  should 
apologies  be  given  though  the  skies  fall ;  and  she  watched  as 
one  fascinated  the  blood  slowly  ebb  from  his  close-set 
face. 

"Under  the  circumstances,"  he  said  abruptly,  "it  was 
hardly  a  —  a  judicious  thing  to  do.  However,  let  us  say  no 
more  about  it." 

He  turned  away  from  her,  obviously  unsteadied  for  all  his 
even  voice.  And  as  he  turned,  his  gaze,  which  had  shifted 
only  to  get  away  from  hers,  was  suddenly  arrested  and  be 
came  fixed. 

In  the  corner  of  the  room,  beside  the  bookcase  holding  the 
works  of  Conant,  Willoughby,  and  Smathers,  lay  the  great 
pleasure-dog  Behemoth,  leonine  head  sunk  upon  two  mas 
sive  outstretched  paws.  But  Behemoth  was  not  asleep;  on 
the  contrary  he  was  overlooking  the  proceedings  in  the  office 
with  an  air  of  intelligent  and  paternal  interest. 

Between  Behemoth  and  young  Henry  Surface  there 
passed  a  long  look.  The  young  man  walked  slowly  across 
the  room  to  where  the  creature  lay,  and,  bending  down, 
patted  him  on  the  head.  He  did  it  with  indescribable  awk 
wardness.  Certainly  Behemoth  must  have  perceived  what 
was  so  plain  even  to  a  human  critic,  that  here  was  the  first 
dog  this  man  had  ever  patted  in  his  life.  Yet,  being  a  pleas 
ure-dog,  he  was  wholly  civil  about  it.  In  fact,  after  a  lidless 
scrutiny  unembarrassed  by  any  recollections  of  his  last  meet 
ing  with  this  young  man,  he  declared  for  friendship. 


418  QUEED 

Gravely  he  lifted  a  behemothian  paw,  and  gravely  the  young 
man  shook  it. 

To  Behemoth  young  Mr.  Surface  addressed  the  following 
remarks :  — 

"West  was  simply  deceived  —  hoodwinked  by  men  in 
finitely  cleverer  than  he  at  that  sort  of  thing.  It  was  a 
manly  thing  —  his  coming  to  you  now  and  telling  you ; 
much  harder  than  never  to  —  have  made  the  mistake  in  the 
beginning.  Of  course —  it  wipes  the  slate  clean.  It  makes 
everything  all  right  now.  You  appreciate  that." 

Behemoth  yawned. 

The  young  man  turned,  and  came  a  step  or  two  forward, 
both  face  and  voice  under  complete  control  again. 

"I  received  a  note  from  you  this  morning,"  he  began 
briskly,  "asking  me  to  come  in  — " 

The  girl's  voice  interrupted  him.  Standing  beside  the 
little  typewriter-table,  exactly  where  her  caller  had  sur 
prised  her,  she  had  watched  with  a  mortifying  dumbness  the 
second  meeting  between  the  pleasure-dog  and  the  little 
Doctor  that  was.  But  now  pride  sprang  to  her  aid,  stinging 
her  into  speech.  For  it  was  an  unendurable  thing  that  she 
should  thus  tamely  surrender  to  him  the  mastery  of  her 
situation,  and  suffer  her  own  fault  to  be  glossed  over  so 
ingloriously. 

"Won't  you  let  me  tell  you,"  she  began  hurriedly,  "how 
sorry  I  am  —  how  ashamed  —  that  I  misjudged  — " 

"No!  No!  I  beg  you  to  stop.  There  is  not  the  smallest 
occasion  for  anything  of  that  sort  — " 

"  Don't  you  see  my  dreadful  position?  I  suspect  you,  mis 
judge  you  —  wrong  you  at  every  step  —  and  all  the  time 
you  are  doing  a  thing  so  fine  —  so  generous  and  splendid  — 
that  I  am  humiliated  —  to  —  " 

Once  again  she  saw  that  painful  transformation  in  his 
face :  a  difficult  dull-red  flood  sweeping  over  it,  only  to  recede 
instantly,  leaving  him  white  from  neck  to  brow. 

"What  is  the  use  of  talking  in  this  way?"  he  asked  per 
emptorily.  "What  is  the  good  of  it,  I  say?  The  matter  is 


QUEED  419 

over  and  done  with.  Everything  is  all  right — his  telling  you 
wipes  it  all  from  the  slate,  just  as  I  said.  Don't  you  see  that? 
Well,  can't  you  dismiss  the  whole  incident  from  your  mind 
and  forget  that  it  ever  happened?" 

"I  will  try  —  if  that  is  what  you  wish." 

She  turned  away,  utterly  disappointed  and  disconcerted 
by  his  summary  disposal  of  the  burning  topic  over  which  she 
had  planned  such  a  long  and  satisfying  discussion.  He 
started  to  say  something,  checked  himself,  and  said  some 
thing  entirely  different. 

"  I  have  received  your  note,"  he  began  directly,  "asking  me 
to  come  in  and  see  you  about  the  matter  of  difference  be 
tween  the  estates.  That  is  why  I  have  called.  I  trust  that 
this  means  that  you  are  going  to  be  sensible  and  take  your 
money." 

"  In  a  way  —  yes.  I  will  tell  you — -what  I  have  thought." 

"Well,  sit  down  to  tell  me  please.  You  look  tired ;  not  well 
at  all.  Not  in  the  least.  Take  this  comfortable  chair." 

Obediently  she  sat  down  in  Mr.  Dayne's  high-backed 
swivel-chair,  which,  when  she  leaned  back,  let  her  neat-shod 
little  feet  swing  clear  of  the  floor.  The  chair  was  a  happy 
thought;  it  steadied  her;  so  did  his  unexampled  solicitous- 
ness,  which  showed,  she  thought,  that  her  emotion  had  not 
escaped  him. 

"  I  have  decided  that  I  would  take  it,"  said  she,  "with  a  — 
a  —  sort  of  condition." 

Sitting  in  the  chair  placed  for  Mr.  Dayne's  callers,  the 
young  man  showed  instant  signs  of  disapprobation. 

" No,  no!  You  are  big  enough  to  accept  your  own  without 
conditions." 

"Oh  —  you  won't  argue  with  me  about  that,  will  you? 
Perhaps  it  is  unreasonable,  but  I  could  never  be  satisfied  to 
take  it  —  and  spend  it  for  myself.  I  could  never  have  any 
pleasure  in  it  —  never  feel  that  it  was  really  mine.  So,"  she 
hurried  on,  "  I  thought  that  it  would  be  nice  to  take  it  —  and 
give  it  away." 

"Give  it  away!"  he  echoed,  astonished  and  displeased. 


420  QUEED 

4 'Yes  —  give  it  to  the  State.  I  thought  I  should  like  to 
give  it  to  —  establish  a  reformatory." 

Their  eyes  met.  Upon  his  candid  face  she  could  watch  the 
subtler  meanings  of  her  idea  slowly  sinking  into  and  taking 
hold  of  his  consciousness. 

"No  —  no ! M  came  from  him,  explosively.  "  No !  You  must 
not  think  of  such  a  thing." 

"Yes  —  I  have  quite  made  up  my  mind.  When  the  idea 
came  to  me  it  was  like  an  inspiration.  It  seemed  to  me  the 
perfect  use  to  make  of  this  money.  Don't  you  see?  .  .  . 
And—" 

"No,  I  don't  see,"  he  said  sharply.  "Why  will  you  per 
sist  in  thinking  that  there  is  something  peculiar  and  unclean 
about  this  money?  —  some  imagined  taint  upon  your  title  to 
it?  Don't  you  understand  that  it  is  yours  in  precisely  the 
same  definite  and  honest  way  that  the  money  this  office  pays 
you  — " 

"Oh  —  surely  it  is  all  a  question  of  feeling.  And  if  I 
feel- 

"It  is  a  question  of  fact,"  said  Mr.  Surface.  "Listen  to 
me.  Suppose  your  father  had  put  this  money  away  for  you 
somewhere,  so  that  you  knew  nothing  about  it,  hidden  it, 
say,  in  a  secret  drawer  somewhere  about  your  house"  — 
did  n't  he  know  exactly  the  sort  of  places  which  fathers  used 
to  hide  away  money  ?  —  "and  that  now,  after  all  these  years, 
you  had  suddenly  found  it,  together  with  a  note  from  him 
saying  that  it  was  for  you.  You  follow  me  perfectly?  Well? 
Would  it  ever  occur  to  you  to  give  that  money  to  the  State 

—  for  a  reformatory  ?" 

"Oh  —  perhaps  not.  How  can  I  tell?  But  that  case 
would—" 

"Would  be  exactly  like  this  one,"  he  finished  for  her 
crisply.  "The  sole  difference  is  that  it  happens  to  be  my 
father  who  hid  the  money  away  instead  of  yours." 

There  was  a  silence. 

"  I  am  sorry, "said  she,  constrainedly,  "that  you  take  this 

—  this  view.    I  had  hoped  so  much  that  you  might  agree 


QUEED  421 

with  me.  Nevertheless,  I  think  my  mind  is  quite  made 
up.  I—" 

"Then  why  on  earth  have  you  gone  through  the  formality 
of  consulting  me,  only  to  tell  me  — " 

"  Oh  —  because  I  thought  it  would  be  so  nice  if  you  would 
agree  with  me!" 

"But  I  do  not  agree  with  you,"  he  said,  looking  at  her 
with  frowning  steadiness.  "I  do  not.  Nobody  on  earth 
would  agree  with  you.  Have  you  talked  with  your  friends 
about  this  mad  proposal?  Have  you  — " 

"None  of  them  but  you.   I  did  not  care  to." 

The  little  speech  affected  him  beyond  all  expectation ;  in 
full  flight  as  he  was,  it  stopped  him  dead.  He  lost  first  the 
thread  of  his  argument;  then  his  steadiness  of  eye  and 
manner;  and  when  he  spoke,  it  was  to  follow  up,  not  his  own 
thought,  but  her  implication,  with  those  evidences  of  embar 
rassment  which  he  could  never  hide. 

"So  we  are  friends  again,"  he  stated,  in  rather  a  strained 
voice. 

"If  you  are  willing  —  to  take  me  back." 

He  sat  silent,  drumming  a  tattoo  on  his  chair-arm  with 
long,  strong  fingers;  and  when  he  resumed  his  argument, 
it  was  with  an  entire  absence  of  his  usual  air  of  authority. 

"On  every  score,  you  ought  to  keep  your  money  —  to 
make  yourself  comfortable  —  to  stop  working  —  to  bring 
yourself  more  pleasures,  trips,  whatever  you  want  —  all 
exactly  as  your  father  intended." 

"Oh!  don't  argue  with  me,  please!  I  asked  you  not.  I 
must  either  take  it  for  that  or  not  at  all." 

"It  —  it  is  not  my  part,"  he  said  reluctantly,  "to  dic 
tate  what  you  shall  do  with  your  own.  I  cannot  sympathize 
in  the  least  with  your  —  your  mad  proposal.  Not  in  the 
least.  However,  I  must  assume  that  you  know  your  own 
mind.  If  it  is  quite  made  up  — " 

"Oh,  it  is!  I  have  thought  it  all  over  so  carefully  —  and 
with  so  much  pleasure." 

He  rose  decisively.  "Very  well,  I  will  go  to  my  lawyers 


422  QUEED 

at    once  —  this   morning.     They   will   arrange   it  as   you 
wish." 

"Oh  —  will  you?  How  can  I  thank  you?  And  oh,"  she 
added  hastily,  "there  was  —  another  point  that  I  —  I 
wished  to  speak  to  you  about." 

He  gazed  down  at  her,  looking  so  small  and  sorrowful-eyed 
in  her  great  chair,  and  all  at  once  his  knees  ran  to  water,  and 
the  terrible  fear  clutched  at  him  that  his  manhood  would  not 
last  him  out  of  the  room.  This  was  the  reason,  perhaps, 
that  his  voice  was  the  little  Doctor's  at  its  brusquest  as  he 
said :  — 

"Well?  What  is  it?" 

"The  question,"  she  said  nervously,  "of  a  —  a  name  for 
this  reformatory  that  I  want  to  found.  I  have  thought  a 
great  deal  about  that.  It  is  a  —  large  part  of  my  idea. 
And  I  have  decided  that  my  reformatory  shall  be  called  — 
that  is,  that  I  should  like  to  call  it  —  the  Henry  G.  Surface 
Home." 

He  stared  at  her  through  a  flash  like  a  man  stupefied ;  and 
then,  wheeling  abruptly,  walked  away  from  her  to  the  win 
dows  which  overlooked  the  park.  For  some  time  he  stood 
there,  back  determinedly  toward  her,  staring  with  great 
fixity  at  nothing.  But  when  he  returned  to  her,  she  had 
never  seen  his  face  so  stern. 

"You  must  be  mad  to  suggest  such  a  thing.  Mad!  Of 
course  I  shall  not  allow  you  to  do  it.  I  shall  not  give  you 
the  money  for  any  such  purpose." 

"  But  if  it  is  mine,  as  you  wrote?  "  said  Sharlee,  looking  up 
at  him  from  the  back  of  her  big  chair. 

Her  point  manifestly  was  unanswerable.  With  charac 
teristic  swiftness,  he  abandoned  it,  and  fell  back  to  far 
stronger  ground. 

"Yes,  the  money  is  yours,"  he  said  stormily.  "  But  that  is 
all.  My  father's  name  is  mine." 

That  silenced  her,  for  the  moment  at  least,  and  he  swept 
rapidly  on4 

"  I  do  not  in  the  least  approve  of  your  giving  your  money 


QUEED  423 

to  establish  a  foundation  at  all.  That,  however,  is  a  matter 
with  which,  unfortunately,  I  have  nothing  to  do.  But  with 
my  father's  name  I  have  everything  to  do.  I  shall  not  per 
mit  you  to  — " 

"Surely — oh,  surely,  you  will  not  refuse  me  so  small  a 
thing  which  would  give  me  so  much  happiness." 

1 '  Happiness ? ' '  He  flung  the  word  back  at  her  impatiently, 
but  his  intention  of  demolishing  it  was  suddenly  checked  by 
a  flashing  remembrance  of  Fifi's  definition  of  it.  "Will 
you  kindly  explain  how  you  would  get  happiness  from 
that?" 

"Oh  —  if  you  don't  see,  I  am  afraid  I  —  could  never 
explain  — " 

"  It  is  a  display  of  just  the  same  sort  of  unthinking  Quix 
otism  which  has  led  you  hitherto  to  refuse  to  accept  your 
own  money.  What  you  propose  is  utterly  irrational  in  every 
way.  Can  you  deny  it?  Can  you  defend  your  proposal  by 
any  reasonable  argument?  I  cannot  imagine  how  so  —  so 
mad  an  idea  ever  came  into  your  mind." 

She  sat  still,  her  fingers  playing  with  the  frayed  edges  of 
Mr.  Dayne's  blotting-pad,  and  allowed  the  silence  to  enfold 
them  once  more. 

"Your  foundation,"  he  went  on,  with  still  further  loss  of 
motive  power,  "would  —  gain  nothing  by  bearing  the  name 
of  my  father.  He  was  not  worthy.  .  .  .  No  one  knows  that 
better  than  you.  Will  you  tell  me  what  impulse  put  it  into 
your  mind  to  —  to  do  this?" 

"I  — had  many  reasons,"  said  she,  speaking  with  some 
difficulty.  "  I  will  tell  you  one.  My  father  loved  him  once.  I 
know  he  would  like  me  to  do  something  —  to  make  the 
name  honorable  again." 

"That,"  he  said,  in  a  hard  voice,  "is  beyond  your  power." 

She  showed  no  disposition  to  contradict  him,  or  even  to 
maintain  the  conversation.  Presently  he  went  on:  — 

"I  cannot  let  you  injure  your  foundation  by  —  branding 
it  with  his  notoriety,  in  an  impulsive  and  —  and  fruitless 
generosity.  For  it  would  be  fruitless.  You,  of  all  people, 


424  QUEED 

must  understand  that  the  burden  on  the  other  side  is  — 
impossibly  heavy.  You  know  that,  don't  you?" 

She  raised  her  head  and  looked  at  him. 

Again,  her  pride  had  been  plucking  at  her  heartstrings, 
burning  her  with  the  remembrance  that  he,  when  he  gave 
her  everything  that  a  man  could  give,  had  done  it  in  a  man 
ner  perfect  and  without  flaw.  And  now  she,  with  her  in 
finitely  smaller  offering,  sat  tongue-tied  and  ineffectual, 
unable  to  give  with  a  show  of  the  purple,  too  poor-spirited 
even  to  yield  him  the  truth  for  his  truth  which  alone  made 
the  gift  worth  the  offering. 

Her  blood,  her  spirit,  and  all  her  inheritance  rallied  at  the 
call  of  her  pride.  She  looked  at  him,  and  made  her  gaze  be 
steady:  though  this  seemed  to  her  the  hardest  thing  "she 
had  ever  done  in  her  life. 

"  I  must  not  let  you  think  that  I  —  wanted  to  do  this  only 
for  your  father's  sake.  That  would  not  be  honest.  Part  of 
my  pleasure  in  planning  it  —  most  of  it,  perhaps  —  was  be 
cause  I  —  I  should  so  much  like  to  do  something  for  your 
father's  son." 

She  rose,  trying  to  give  the  movement  a  casual  air,  and 
went  over  to  her  little  desk,  pretending  to  busy  herself 
straightening  out  the  litter  of  papers  upon  it.  From  this 
safe  distance,  her  back  toward  him,  she  forced  herself  to 
add:  — 

"This  reformatory  will  take  the  place  of  the  one  you  — 
would  have  won  for  us.  Don't  you  see?  Half  —  my  hap 
piness  in  giving  it  is  gone,  unless  you  will  lend  me  the  name." 

Behind  her  the  silence  was  impenetrable. 

She  stood  at  her  desk,  methodically  sorting  papers  which 
she  did  not  see,  and  wildly  guessing  at  the  meaning  of  that 
look  of  turbulent  consciousness  which  she  had  seen  break 
startled  into  his  eyes.  More  even  than  in  their  last  meeting, 
she  had  found  that  the  sight  of  his  face,  wonderfully  changed 
yet  even  more  wonderfully  the  same,  deeply  affected  her 
to-day.  Its  new  sadness  and  premature  age  moved  her 
strangely ;  with  a  peculiar  stab  of  compassion  and  pain  she 


QUEED  425 

had  seen  for  the  first  time  the  gray  in  the  nondescript  haii 
about  his  temples.  For  his  face,  she  had  seen  that  the 
smooth  sheath  of  satisfied  self-absorption,  which  had  once 
overlain  it  like  the  hard  veneer  on  a  table-top,  had  been 
scorched  away  as  in  a  baptism  by  fire;  from  which  all 
that  was  best  in  it  had  come  out  at  once  strengthened  and 
chastened.  And  she  thought  that  the  shining  quality  of 
honesty  in  his  face  must  be  such  as  to  strike  strangers  on  the 
street. 

And  now,  behind  her  on  the  office  floor,  she  heard  his 
footsteps,  and  in  one  breath  was  suddenly  cold  with  the  fear 
that  her  hour  had  come,  and  hot  with  the  fear  that  it  had 
not. 

Engrossed  with  her  papers,  she  moved  so  as  to  keep  her 
back  toward  him;  but  he,  with  a  directness  which  would 
not  flinch  even  in  this  untried  emergency,  deliberately  in 
truded  himself  between  her  and  the  table ;  and  so  once  more 
they  stood  face  to  face. 

"I  don't  understand  you,"  he  began,  his  manner  at  its 
quietest.  "Why  do  you  want  to  do  this  for  me?" 

At  this  close  range,  she  glanced  once  at  him  and  instantly 
looked  away.  His  face  was  as  white  as  paper ;  and  when  sh« 
saw  that  her  heart  first  stopped  beating,  and  then  pounded 
off  in  a  wild  frightened  paean. 

"I  —  cannot  tell  you  —  I  don't  know  —  exactly." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

She  hardly  recognized  his  voice;  instinctively  she  began 
backing  away. 

"  I  don't  think  I  • —  can  explain.  You  —  rather  terrify  me 
this  morning." 

"Are  you  in  love  with  ME?"  he  demanded  in  a  terrible 
voice,  beginning  at  the  wrong  end,  as  he  would  be  sure  to  do. 

Finger  at  her  lip,  her  blue  eyes,  bright  with  unshed  tears, 
resting  upon  his  in  a  gaze  as  direct  as  a  child's,  Sharlee 
nodded  her  head  up  and  down. 

And  that  was  all  the  hint  required  by  clever  Mr.  Surface, 
the  famous  social  scientist.  He  advanced  somehow,  and 


426  QUEED 

took  her  in  his  arms.  On  the  whole,  it  was  rather  surprising 
how  satisfactorily  he  did  it,  considering  that  she  was  the 
first  woman  he  had  ever  touched  in  all  his  days. 

So  they  stood  through  a  time  that  might  have  been  a 
minute  and  might  have  been  an  age,  since  all  of  them  that 
mattered  had  soared  away  to  the  sunlit  spaces  where  no 
time  is.  After  awhile,  driven  by  a  strange  fierce  desire  to  see 
her  face  in  the  light  of  this  new  glory,  he  made  a  gentle 
effort  to  hold  her  off  from  him,  but  she  clung  to  him,  crying, 
"No,  no!  I  don't  want  you  to  see  me  yet." 

After  another  interval  of  uncertain  length,  she  said:  — 

"All  along  my  heart  has  cried  out  that  you  could  n't  have 
done  that,  and  hurt  me  so.  You  could  n't.  I  will  never  doubt 
my  heart  again.  And  you  were  so  fine  —  so  fine  —  to  for 
give  me  so  easily." 

In  the  midst  of  his  dizzying  exaltation,  he  marveled  at  the 
ease  with  which  she  spoke  her  inmost  feeling ;  he,  the  great 
apostle  of  reason  and  self-mastery,  was  much  slower  in  re 
covering  lost  voice  and  control.  It  was  some  time  before  he 
would  trust  himself  to  speak,  and  even  then  the  voice  that 
he  used  was  not  recognizable  as  his. 

"So  you  are  willing  to  do  as  much  for  my  father's  son  as  to 
—  to  —  take  his  name  for  your  own." 

"No,  this  is  something  that  I  am  doing  for  myself.  Your 
father  was  not  perfect,  but  he  was  the  only  father  that  ever 
had  a  son  whose  name  I  would  take  for  mine." 

A  silence. 

"We  can  keep  my  father's  house,"  he  said,  in  time,  "for  — 
for  —  us  to  live  in.  You  must  give  up  the  office.  And  I  will 
find  light  remunerative  work,  which  will  leave  at  least  part 
of  my  time  free  for  my  book." 

She  gave  a  little  laugh  that  was  half  a  sob.  "Perhaps  — 
you  could  persuade  that  wealthy  old  lady  —  to  get  out  a 
second  edition  of  her  thesaurus  /" 

"I  wish  I  could,  though!" 

"You  talk  just  like  my  little  Doctor,"  she  gasped  — "my 
— own  little  Doctor.  .  .  .  I've  got  a  little  surprise  for  you 


QUEED  427 

—  about  remunerative  work,"  she  went  on,  "only  I  can't 
tell  you  now,  because  it 's  a  secret.  Promise  that  you  won't 
make  me  tell  you." 

He  promised. 

Suddenly,  without  knowing  why,  she  began  to  cry,  her 
cheek  against  his  breast.  "You've  had  a  sad  life,  little 
Doctor  —  a  sad  life.  But  I  am  going  to  make  it  all  up  to 
you  —  if  you  will  show  me  the  way." 

Presently  she  became  aware  that  her  telephone  was  ring 
ing,  and  ringing  as  though  it  had  been  at  it  for  some  time. 

"Oh  bother!  They  won't  let  us  have  even  a  little  minute 
together  after  all  these  years.  I  suppose  you  must  let  me 
go-" 

She  turned  from  the  desk  with  the  most  beautiful  smile 
he  had  ever  seen  upon  a  face. 

"It's  for  you!" 

"For  me?"  he  echoed  like  a  man  in  a  dream.   "That  is 

—  very  strange." 

Strange,  indeed !  Outside,  the  dull  world  was  wagging  on 
as  before,  unaware  that  there  had  taken  place  in  this  en 
chanted  room  the  most  momentous  event  in  history. 

He  took  the  receiver  from  her  with  a  left  hand  which 
trembled,  and  with  his  untrained  right  somehow  caught  and 
imprisoned  both  of  hers.  "Stand  right  by  me,"  he  begged 
hurriedly. 

Now  he  hoisted  the  receiver  in  the  general  direction  of  his 
ear,  and  said  in  what  he  doubtless  thought  was  quite  a  busi 
nesslike  manner:  "Well?" 

"Mr.  Queed?  This  is  Mr.  Hickok,"  said  the  incisive  voice 
over  the  wire.  "Well,  what  in  the  mischief  are  you  doing  up 
there?" 

"I'm  —  I'm  —  transacting  some  important  business  — 
with  the  Department,"  said  Mr.  Surface,  and  gave  Sharlee's 
hands  a  desperate  squeeze.  "But  my  — " 

"Well,  we're  transacting  some  important  business  down 
here.  Never  should  have  found  you  but  for  Mr.  Dayne's  hap 
pening  along.  Did  you  know  that  West  had  resigned?" 


428  QUEED 

"No,  has  he?  But  I  started  — " 

"  Peace  to  his  ashes.  De  mortuis  nil  nisi  bonum.  The  di 
rectors  are  meeting  now  to  elect  his  successor.  Only  one 
name  has  been  mentioned.  There's  only  one  editor  we'll 
hear  of  for  the  paper.  Won't  you  come  back  to  us,  my 
boy?" 

The  young  man  cleared  his  throat.  "Come?  I'd  — 
think  it  the  greatest  honor  —  there 's  nothing  I  'd  rather 
have.  You  are  all  too  —  too  kind  to  me  —  I  can't  tell  you 
—  but—" 

"Oh,  no  buts!  But  us  no  buts  now!  I'll  go  tell 
them—" 

"No  — wait,"  called  the  young  man, hastily.  " If  I  come, 
I  don't  come  as  Queed,  you  know.  My  name  is  Henry  G. 
Surface.  That  may  make  a  difference  — " 

"  Come  as  Beelzebub ! "  said  the  old  man,  testily.  "We  've 
had  enough  of  hiring  a  name  for  the  Post.  This  time  we're 
after  a  man,  and  by  the  Lord,  we've  got  one!" 

Henry  Surface  turned  away  from  the  telephone,  strug 
gling  with  less  than  his  usual  success  to  show  an  unmoved 
face. 

"You  — know?" 

She  nodded :  in  her  blue-spar  eyes,  there  was  the  look  of  a 
winged  victory.  "That  was  the  little  secret  —  don't  you 
think  it  was  a  nice  one?  It  is  your  magnificent  boast  come 
true.  .  .  .  And  you  don't  even  say  'I  told  you  so'!" 

He  looked  past  her  out  into  the  park.  Over  the  budding 
trees,  already  bursting  and  spreading  their  fans  of  green,  far 
off  over  the  jagged  stretch  of  roofs,  his  gaze  sought  the  bat 
tered  gray  Post  building  and  the  row  of  windows  behind 
which  he  had  so  often  sat  and  worked.  A  mist  came  before 
his  eyes ;  the  trees  curveted  and  swam ;  and  his  visible  world 
swung  upside  down  and  went  out  in  a  singing  and  spark- 
shot  blackness. 

She  came  to  his  side  again :  in  silence  slipped  her  hand  into 
his;  and  following  both  his  look  and  his  thought,  she  felt 
own  eyes  smart  with  a  sudden  bright  dimness. 


QUEED  429 

"This  is  the  best  city  in  the  world,"  said  Henry  Surface. 
"  The  kindest  people  —  the  kindest  people  —  " 

"Yes,  little  Doctor." 

He  turned  abruptly  and  caught  her  to  him  again ;  and  now, 
hearing  even  above  the  hammering  of  his  own  blood  the 
wild  fluttering  of  her  heart  against  his,  his  tongue  unlocked 
and  he  began  to  speak  his  heart.  It  was  not  speech  as  he  had 
always  known  speech.  In  all  his  wonderful  array  of  termin 
ology  there  were  no  words  fitted  to  this  undreamed  need ;  he 
had  to  discover  them  somehow,  by  main  strength  make  them 
up  for  himself ;  and  they  came  out  stammering,  hard-wrung, 
bearing  new  upon  their  rough  faces  the  mint-mark  of  his 
own  heart.  Perhaps  she  did  not  prize  them  any  the  less  on 
that  account. 

"  I  'm  glad  that  you  love  me  that  way  —  Henry.  I  must 
call  you  Henry  now —  must  n't  I,  Henry?  " 

uDo  you  know,"  she  said,  after  a  time,  "I  am  —  almost 
weakening  about  giving  our  money  for  a  Home.  Somehow, 
I  'd  so  like  for  you  to  have  it,  so  that  — " 

She  felt  a  little  shiver  run  through  him. 

"No,  no!  I  could  not  bear  to  touch  it.  We  shall  be  far 
happier — " 

"You  could  stop  work,  buy  yourself  comforts,  pleasures, 
trips.  It  is  a  mad  thing,"  she  teased,  "to  give  away  money. 
.  .  .  Oh,  little  Doctor — I  can't  breathe  if  you  hold  me  — 
so  tight." 

"About  the  name,"  he  said  presently,  "I — dislike  to  op 
pose  you,  but  I  cannot  —  I  cannot  — " 

"Well,  I've  decided  to  change  it,  Henry,  in  deference  to 
your  wishes." 

"  I  am  extremely  glad.   I  myself  know  a  name  — " 

"  Instead  of  calling  it  the  Henry  G.  Surface  Home  —  " 

Suddenly  she  drew  away  from  him,  leaving  behind 
both  her  hands  for  a  keepsake,  and  raised  to  him  a  look 
so  luminous  and  radiant  that  he  felt  himself  awed  before 
it,  like  one  who  with  impious  feet  has  blundered  upon  holy 
ground. 


430  QUEED 

"  I  am  going  to  call  it  the  Henry  G.  Surface  Junior  Home. 
Do  you  know  any  name  for  a  Home  so  pretty  as  that?  " 

"No,  no,  I  —  can't  let  you — " 

But  she  cried  him  down  passionately,  saying:  "  Yes,  that 
is  our  name  now,  and  we  are  going  to  make  it  honorable." 

From  his  place  beside  the  sociological  bookcase  —  per 
haps  faunal  naturalists  can  tell  us  why  —  the  great  pleasure- 
dog  Behemoth,  whose  presence  they  had  both  forgotten, 
raised  his  leonine  head  and  gave  a  sharp,  joyous  bark. 


A  MAN'S  MAN 


By  IAN  HAY 


"An  admirable  romance  of  adventure.  It  tells  of  the 
life  of  one  Hughie  Marrable,  who,  from  college  days  to 
the  time  when  fate  relented,  had  no  luck  with  women. 
The  story  is  cleverly  written  and  full  cr.  sprightly 
axioms."  —  Philadelphia  Ledger. 

"  It  is  a  very  joyous  book,  and  the  writer's  powers  of 
characterization  are  much  out  of  the  common."  —  The 

Dial. 

"A  good,  clean,  straightforward  bit  of  fiction,  with 
likable  people  in  it,  and  enough  action  to  keep  up  the 
suspense  throughout." — Minneapolis  Journal. 

"The  reader  will  search  contemporary  fiction  far  be 
fore  he  meets  a  novel  which  will  give  him  the  same 
frank  pleasure  and  amusement."  — London  Bookman. 

With  frontispiece.    12 mo,  $1.20  net.    Postage  10  cents. 


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ENCHANTED  GROUND 

An  Episode  in  the  Life  of  a  Young  Man 

By  HARRY  JAMES  SMITH 

"  An  absorbing,  dramatic,  and  sweet  story  ...  a  pro 
blem  novel — with  a  solution." — New  York  Times. 

"  One  of  the  strongest  American  novels  that  has  ap 
peared  in  several  seasons.  .  .  .  The  whole  story  is  on 
a  far  higher  plane  than  the  ordinary  novel  of  Ameri 
can  life.  The  main  characters  are  real,  but  they  are 
touched  with  the  fire  of  the  spirit." — San  Francisco 
Chronicle. 

"It  has  a  strong  vein  of  sentiment,  a  flexible  and 
kindly  humor,  a  plot  directly  concerned  with  a  pair  of 
young  lovers,  and  a  vigorous  style,"  —  The  Nation. 

"  That  it  will  be  a  favorite  seems  to  us  a  safe  predic 
tion.  .  .  .  There  is  no  part  of  it  which,  once  begun,  is 
likely  to  be  left  unread."  —  The  Dial. 

1 2 mo,  $1.20  net.     Postage  12  cents. 


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TRUE  THRILLING  TALES 

Adrift  on  an  Ice-Pan 

By  WILFRED  T.  GRENFELL 

"  The  adventure,  as  romantic  as  anything  in  fiction,  is  narrated 
with  great  charm  and  with  characteristic  modesty.  The  doctor's 
sensations  when  he  found  himself  face  to  face  with  death  are 
of  singular  interest,  and  his  description  of  the  conduct  of  his 
faithful  dogs  is  pathetic  in  the  extreme.  It  is  a  book  to  warm 
one's  heart."  —  Boston  Globe. 

Illustrated  from  Photographs 
Narrow  izmo,  75  cents  net.  Postpaid  83  cents 

Stickeen :  The  Story  of  a  Dog 

By  JOHN  MUIR 

u  There  have  been  no  end  of  dog  stories  of  power  and  interest, 
but  this  is  not  a  work  of  fiction ;  it  is  the  interested  study  and 
appreciation  of  a  strange  little  animal,  by  one  who  is  not  inclined 
to  be  sentimental  in  his  views.  .  .  .  The  record  is  told  with  such 
simplicity  and  force  that  it  may  easily  become  a  classic  among 
books  dealing  with  nature  studies."  —  St.  Louis  Globe-Democrat. 

Narrow  I2mo,  60  cents  net.  Postpaid  68  cents 


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THE  RIGHT  STUFF 

By  IAN  HAY 

"  Those  who  love  the  companionship  of  people  of  fine 
fibre,  and  to  whom  a  sense  of  humor  has  not  been 
denied,  will  make  no  mistake  in  seeking  the  society 
open  to  them  in  'The  Right  Stuff.'  " 

New  York  Times. 

"  Hay  resembles  Barrie,  and,  like  Barrie,  he  will  grow 
in  many  ways."  —  Cleveland  Leader. 

"  A  compelling  tribute  to  the  homely  genuineness  and 
sterling  worth  of  Scottish  character." 

St.  Louis  Post  Dispatch. 

41  Mr.  Hay  has  written  a  story  which  is  pure  story  and 
is  a  delight  from  beginning  to  end." 

San  Francisco  Argonaut. 

"It  would  be  hard,  indeed,  to  find  a  more  winning 
book." — New  Orleans  Times- Democrat. 

With  frontispiece  by  James  Montgomery  Flagg.     12 mo. 

$1.20  net.     Postage  10  cents. 


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THE  TWISTED  FOOT 

By  HENRY  MILNER  RIDEOUT 


"  Henry  Milner  Rideout  has  written  several  good 
stories  of  Oriental  mystery,  but  none  of  them  ap 
proach  in  excellence  'The  Twisted  Foot.'  " 

Cleveland  Plain  Dealer. 

"The  story  is  fascinating  and  full  of  the  witchery  of 
the  East."  —  Congregationalist. 

"Its  persuasiveness  of  action,  its  alluring  color  and 
high  heart  courage,  make  it  one  of  the  striking  ro 
mances  of  the  time."  — New  York  American. 

"The  whole  story  glows  with  the  local  life  and  color." 

New  York  Times. 


With  seven  full-page  illustrations  by  G.  C.  Widney. 
12010.     $i.2o«£/.     Postage  ii  cents. 


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THE  BREAKING  IN  OF  A 
YACHTSMAN'S  WIFE 

By  MARY  HEATON  VORSE 

"  Clever  !  Sparkling  !  Full  of  quaint  humor  and  crisp 
description  !  Altogether  a  book  which  will  not  disap 
point  the  reader.  It  is  'different,'  and  that  is  one  great 
merit  in  a  book."  —  Brooklyn  Eagle. 

"  It  will  puzzle  holiday  makers  to  find  a  better  vacation 
book  than  this.  Those  who  go  up  and  down  the  Sound 
in  yachts  will  find  it  especially  pleasing ;  it  will  appeal 
to  those  who  are  fond  of  human  nature  studies ;  may 
be  recommended  even  more  decidedly  to  the  serious 
than  to  the  young  and  frivolous  ;  a  tonic  to  depression 
and  an  antidote  to  gloom."  —  N.  Y.  Times. 

"  Charming,  with  its  salt,  sea-slangy  flavor,  its  double 
love  thread,  and  its  pleasant  chapters  dealing  with 
Long  Island  Sound,  the  Mediterranean,  Massachusetts 
Bay  and  Venetian  lagoons. "  —  Chicago  Record-Herald. 

Illustrated  by  Reginald  Birch.   I2tno,  $1.50 


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COMPANY  rallBM  NEW  YORK 


JJO9    1938 


\\jt^ 

IFeb'SCFW 
WTFJ 


yB'32885 


901048 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


